


































, '^ 



"^^0^ 



















"... ^ 



TO BAGDAD 
WITH THE BRITISH 



e~ 



rW^ 




Turkish troops prisoners in Bagdad 



TO BAGDAD 
WITH THE BRITISH 



BY 

ARTHUR TILLOTSON CLARK 




UiUSTEATED 



D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 
NEW YORK LONDON 



1918 






COPTBIGHT, 1918, BY 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY 



MAR 27 1318 



Printed in the United States of America 



©CU494343 



TO 
MY MOTHER 



, 



FOREWORD 

The author of this work, Mr. Arthur T. Clark, is a 
member of Princeton University of the Class of 1918. 
In the midst of his college course he gave up his work 
to enlist as a member of the Young Men ^s Christian As- 
sociation, going to the most difficult of all fields in the 
world, that of Mesopotamia. This volume is a record of 
his experiences there in the midst of the stirring war 
scenes of the campaign which resulted successfully in 
the capture of Bagdad. 

Mr. Clark's account is based upon an intimate knowl- 
edge of the events which he personally observed and of 
which he was a part. This gives us an excellent idea 
of a chapter in the world's war which is little known 
and yet which has unique significance. The capture of 
Bagdad places an insurmountable obstacle in the way of 
the German realization of their Hamburg-Persian Gulf 
ambition. It is well for us all to know something of the 
particular events whose significance will be more and 
more appreciated as time goes on and as the insolent 
ambitions of Germany are more and more clearly re- 
vealed. 

The author of this book is now a member of the United 
States Aviation Corps and I am sure will give his serv- 
ices as conscientiously and valiantly to the army of 
his own country as at the beginning of the war he gave 
his best efforts in the Y. M. C. A. service of our great 
ally. 

John Grieb Hibben, 
President of Princeton University. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Preparing the Play, '^On to Bagdad'' — 
England in the Persian Gulf and the 

German-Bagdad Railway ... 1 

II. The Tragedy — Act I, Part 1 — Brilliant 

Success 26 

III. The Tragedy — Act I, Part 2 — The Ad- 

vance Toward Bagdad .... 45 

IV. The Tragedy — Act II — The Disaster . 65 
V. Writing a New Play — ''On to Bagdad'' 86 

VI. The New Show — Act I — Getting Ready 109 

VII. A New Plunge for Kut — Act II . . 132 

VIII. Act III — Serious Fighting . . . 152 

IX. Act IV — The Rout of the Turks — First 

Phase 170 

X. Act V — The Rout of the Turks — Second 

Phase 189 

XI. Bagdad, The British Prize . . . 205 

XII. Tommy in Bagdad 224 

XIII. From Turkish to British . . .239 

XIV. Behind the Scenes— The Y. M. C. A. . 259 
XV. Persons of the Play .... 279 

ix 



LIST OF ILLUSTEATIONS 

Turkish troops prisoners in Bagdad . . Frontispiece 



PACINQ 
PAGE 



The highway of Busra, the ''Venice of the East" 34' 

Arab huts on the bank of the Tigris . . . . 34" 

One of Bagdad's beautiful Mosques .... 64 

The arch of Ctesiphon 64 

A bend in the long covered bazaar which runs 

through Bagdad 138*^ 

Turkish river mines which failed to halt the Brit- ^ 

ish advance 138' 

Old mud wells of the Arabs on the Tigris near 
Bagdad 174 

A fire trench in the British trenches at Sanniyat 174 

British troops moving through a Bagdad street . 200^ 

Indian troops entering Bagdad through a heavy 

dust storm 200*^ 

;When British and Russian forces came together 

in Bagdad 258^^ 

xi 



xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 



FACING 

PAGE 



Tommies interested in the telegraphic report, 
** America declares war" 258' 

Bazaar Chiefs, the commercial geniuses of Meso- 
potamia 278 

The author, as guest of the Koyal Flying Corps, 
beginning early to learn to fly for Uncle Sam 278 



LIST OF MAPS 

PAOH 

I. Route of the German Bagdad Railway, de- 
signed to realize the amhitions of Ger- 
many for World Empire; showing the 
important position of Bagdad, Mesopo- 
tamia and the Persian Gulf as obstacles 
in the way of the Kaiser's schemes . . 9 

II. The stage for the Mesopotamia ''show" . 39 

III. The country and the river bends over which 

the British fought their way to and 
around Kut 135 

IV. The British city of Bagdad 202 



TO BAGDAD WITH THE 
BRITISH 



CHAPTER I 

PREPARING FOR THE PLAY "ON TO BAGDAD"— 
ENGLAND IN THE PERSIAN GULF AND THE GER- 
MAN-BAGDAD RAILWAY 

In the Great War Mesopotamia is a ^^side 
show. ' ' Its importance is not to be compared with 
that of the western front. The fact that the war 
must be won in France is brought home to us 
every day. No matter what may happen to the 
front in Roumania, in Italy, in Egypt, in Mesopo- 
tamia, the French front holds the key to the end 
of the war and our final victory. But there are 
points of view from which even side shows are 
important. 

The war in France has been characterized over 
and over again as **a grim business.'' Such it 
certainly is. For one who is in it continually, it 

1 



2 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

becomes more than a grim business. It becomes a 
nerve-racking, monotonous business. There are 
plenty of side lights that brighten up the thing in 
spots for certain people, but the whole war as a 
war is a great exhibition of strength, of capacity, 
of grim determination. 

If we would get away from war as it is in 
France and still feel in close touch with the Great 
War, we could do better than catch a glimpse of 
the side show in Mesopotamia. There we can get 
into the atmosphere of melodrama, of romance, of 
imagination. For the side show there was *^0n 
to Bagdad^' and has proved that in the right place 
war even to-day can be a romance. 

As one of the surging crowds that have gone to 
fairs, from county fairs to world fairs, I have 
always been carried away, with the rest, by the 
exhibition of the triumphs of genius, of force, of 
endurance that man has won in every phase of 
life. I have entered the exhibition grounds with 
a sense of awe, and have left them with a greater 
respect for my fellow men and a greater faith for 
the future. But I have always, somehow, wan- 
dered into the side shows that grow up near the 



PEEPARING FOR THE PLAY 3 

grounds, where a tired fair-goer may pass a re- 
freshing hour watching a magician, or a melo- 
drama staged by a company of traveling players. 
The bare feats of strength and of brains at which 
I marveled so, were in themselves too prosaic and 
I sought the human touch. 

It was my good fortune — ^before America came 
into the war and while the grim business of war 
was still something of which we knew little and 
felt less — to go to the war in Mesopotamia. 

In America we were still blissfully ignorant of 
all the ambition of Germany and of all that war 
means. For us students at Princeton, life was 
going on as happily and peacefully as ever, when 
the call came for men to go with the British troops 
to Mesopotamia, ^^ where there is the most atro- 
cious climate in the world and where there are 
more insects and germs to the square inch than 
there are bullets to the square mile.'' That was 
the way it sounded. Needless to say, those who 
told us the discouraging tales of the country had 
an insight into the fancies of college men. Promise 
them adventure even in the worst place in the 
world and they will risk their necks. In this case 



4 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

there was more still, the chance to give a hand. 
After much confabbing and deciding, five of us 
found ourselves on a transatlantic steamer bound 
for — that we did not know. If we could believe the 
** Arabian Nights'^ we were certainly on a curious 
expedition. Think of going to Bagdad or to one 
of the wonder-lands of Sindhad the Sailor! 

We sped across the Atlantic, through the 
danger zone, to the beautiful country of France, 
rent asunder by war. Just a week there was 
enough to teach us the awful lessons of war. Then 
on, dodging submarines continually, we sailed 
through the blue and white Mediterranean. War- 
ships and transports signaled to us as we passed. 
Next we glided slowly through the Suez Canal, 
where the vassals of Germany were trying to 
break through to cut off that route to India. The 
banks of the canal were covered thick with troops, 
Indian, Egyptian, and English, and the Turks 
were near by. Not many days before, they had 
made a desperate charge on the canal and had 
even launched a boat before they were driven 
back. Next we sizzled through the Red Sea and 
stopped at its end at Aden. Just behind that town 



PREPARING FOR THE PLAY 5 

of exile, too, the Turks were stirring np trouble. 
We were half way around the world and still there 
was war. We began to realize that this truly was 
a World War. Driven on by the monsoon we 
reached India, and there, in the beautiful harbor 
of Bombay, were freighters with munitions and 
supplies, transports with troops, and hospital 
boats with wounded and sick. We heard that a 
steamer had just been sunk by a German mine not 
far from the coast. In India we found troop 
trains rushing troops up through the country to 
the northwest frontier to fight the tribes of 
Afghans, and to the interior to put down the 
trouble that Germans were trying to stir up in 
India itself. Surely the war was everywhere. 
And we were yet to go to the land of fairy stories. 
Finally we arrived even there, sailing up through 
the Persian Gulf to Busra, Sindbad^s port. 

From there, as a sort of stage hand, it was my 
privilege to watch closely some of the acts of the 
splendid side show, *^0n to Bagdad,'' to follow 
the armies of Great Britain up through the most 
interesting of all countries, to move up the wind- 
ing Tigris past the remains of the glories of the 



6 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Chaldeans, of the Babylonians, of the Persians, 
of the ancient Greeks, and of the great Arabian 
Kaliphs, to the wonderful city of Bagdad. 

"We hardly realize how closely connected the 
World War is, from end to end of the earth. 
Away out there at the other side of the globe a 
big part of the Great War has been fought and 
won. No one can tell how many more of the wide 
plans of the Kaiser might now be carried out if 
the little British wedge in the Persian Gulf had 
not been in the way to hold so many of the troops 
of Germany's vassals in Mesopotamia. No one 
can tell how real might have become the Kaiser's 
boast of control of India, Egypt and the rest of 
Africa. ^^ Drang nach Oesten^' lay beneath the 
war in Mesopotamia. The key to the hoped-for 
world supremacy for Germany lay in her control 
of the highway of Asia Minor, Palestine and 
Mesopotamia, the great highway to the East. 
Mesopotamia, which in the days of Babylon sup- 
ported ten million people, again rose to impor- 
tance in the affairs of the world. 

Back in 1914, as the war was approaching, over 
72,000 laborers were working on the Berlin-Bag- 



PEEPARING FOR THE PLAY 7 

dad Railway, trying to shove it through the Tau- 
rus mountains and get it in shape so that it could 
carry Pan-German troops over to the Persian 
frontier and give a chance for the drive on India, 
the first step in the conquest of the Far East. 
At the same time the railways in Palestine were 
getting ready to rush other Pan-German troops 
down from Asia Minor to block the Suez Canal, 
that most important route to India and the Far 
East from the Mediterranean. 

Mesopotamia, lying right between Palestine and 
Persia, was the key position. For England to 
hold the troops of the enemy there would mean 
relief both in Persia and in Palestine, and safety 
for India and Egypt. It might mean the salvation 
of the entire Far East. Now, in 1918, when both 
Bagdad and Jerusalem are under British pro- 
tection, we have a glimpse of the real importance 
of the war in Mesopotamia, for the campaigns in 
Mesopotamia and Palestine have worked together 
to block the deep-laid plans of the Huns. They 
are far from Egypt and far from India. 

Emperor William, soon after his accession to 
the German throne, proclaimed himself Defender 



8 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

of Islam, the Mohammedan world; became the 
guardian of the Turkish throne ; and, on the most 
shady of premises, started the Berlin-Bagdad 
Eailway. These three facts spelled one thing- 
expansion eastward. They meant that Egypt and 
India would before long feel the pressure of Ger- 
man intrigue; that either by stealth or by force 
Germany would some day seize them both. With 
her railways, her Mohammedan vassals and her 
trade, she was well on the way — and then came 
the war, and with it a little British force from 
India on an island of the Persian Gulf, at the 
entrance of Mesopotamia. 

Strange that into that decayed, historic, mys- 
terious country should come a great war, fought 
by great modern armies ! Strange, too, how it all 
came about ! 

The ** Arabian Nights'' tells the tales of the 
wonderful trips of Sindbad the Sailor between 
Bagdad and the cities of India, of his journey on a 
raft through a mountain to the domains of the 
King of the Indies and his return, with presents 
to Haroim-al-Raschid, his lord in Bagdad. There 
are many reasons for believing that Sindbad was 



10 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

a real person. Certainly his occupation was a 
real one, for when India became a colony of Eng- 
land, one of the first steps of the new government 
was to encourage and protect trade between her 
new charge and the renowned city of Bagdad. 

Away back in the days when the first New 
England colonies were just starting, a British 
force was fighting the Portuguese in the Persian 
Gulf. That was the beginning. Not many months 
ago a British force entered Bagdad. 

About half a century after England's arrival in 
the gulf, Turkey moved her border down through 
Mesopotamia to the top of the Persian Gulf. 
There was no opposition to this. One look at the 
country was enough to bring the British sailors 
in the gulf to the conclusion that Mesopotamia 
was a place for Turks, or for wandering Arabs, 
not for them. 

England's task was to get rid of the hostile 
powers in the gulf and to keep peace there, that 
there might be trade between India and Persia 
and Bagdad. Little did it matter who owned 
Mesopotamia. No one saw ahead two hundred 
years to the ambitions of a Pan-German monarch. 



PEEPARING FOB THE PLAY 11 

In 1622, by a treaty with the Shah of Persia, Eng- 
land took up the burden of keeping men-of-war 
in the Persian Gulf. Persia, with its soil rich in 
mineral deposits, its great endless plateaus and its 
high natural sea wall on the east side of the 
Persian Gulf, gained through British ousting of 
Portuguese and Dutch, her only harbor and out- 
let to the world. To the west of the gulf lay 
Arabia, the home of countless wandering tribes, 
neither governing nor governed. Above the gulf, 
between these two countries — ^no one knows just 
where the borders are — lay Mesopotamia, the land 
^^ between the rivers.'' As time went on there 
still arose no occasion for England to be inter- 
ested in the future of that blighted country. The 
right of trade through it was important, but that 
country which controlled the Persian Gulf con- 
trolled the important part, the trade route be- 
tween the Tigris and the rest of the world. All 
the rest of Turkey faced the Bosphorus, but Meso- 
potamia faced south. 

The British men-of-war and the British flag 
became more and more objects of respect both to 
Persians and to Arabs, There is no cause to 



12 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

question England ^s right to what she had. It was 
not land, it was influence. It was the British 
policy of give and take. She gave Persia her sea- 
board ; she made trade safer ; she claimed in return 
for her work not land but the right to police the 
gulf in every nook and comer. She could have 
claimed this right, and more, as conqueror of the 
Portuguese and the Dutch, yet she asked it in 
return for a service. She paid for the ** wedge'' 
in the gulf with men, with ships and with patient 
labor. And policing was no joke. Barbary pirates 
were polished gentlemen in comparison with 
the wily Arabs who infested the gulf waters and 
the waters just outside, along the coast of Baluchi- 
stan and India. If the Arabian coast had been de- 
signed specially for the pirates' purpose, it could 
not have been better made. All along the coast 
lagoons, natural breakwaters in front of sheltered 
harbors, were secluded hiding places where the 
pirate boats could rest unnoticed till the time 
should come for a sally. It was a wild and excit- 
ing life that these fellows led. Hardy as the Vik- 
ing explorers, they braved, not the icy storms of 
the north sea, but the parching blasts of the 



PEEPARING FOR THE PLAY 13 

Arabian wind and the cruel rays of the desert sun. 
On a day I spent in the gulf not long ago, during 
the twelve day-hours from six to six, the shade 
temperature never got below 100 degrees and rose 
to 121. We must give credit to the men who 
manned the British patrol in the gulf during all 
seasons, wet, dry, chilly, and blazing hot. But in 
spite of their efforts the piracy became greater 
and greater. It was discouraging — but for the 
sake of her trade and of order England kept up 
the good fight. The Arabs, oppressed by the 
Turks on two sides, from Egypt and from Meso- 
potamia, were becoming more organized. One 
tribe, the Wahabis, proved itself master, and the 
Arabs, coming together under their leadership, 
could cease fighting among themselves on land 
and spend their time in plundering people of other 
races and nations on the sea. 

During the years of our War of Independence 
and the French Revolution, while so much of 
world importance was happening in Europe and 
America, there were British men-of-war putting 
down piracy in this mysterious part of the world, 
the Persian Gulf. On into the nineteenth century 



14 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

they f onglit it, but still it continued and increased. 
It finally developed into more than piracy, into 
absolute warfare. A great fleet of pirate vessels, 
with their cut-throat pirates seven thousand 
strong, set out to ravage not only the sea but the 
coasts. At this most startling turn of affairs a 
large force of British troops went to the gulf. 
To-day, on the colors of that force, is blazoned the 
word ** Arabia" for that tussle with the Arab 
pirates. Tommies were policemen then. Another 
century and the shores of Arabia would see them 
as soldiers in the Great War. 

Aggressive measures, thus begun, gradually put 
an end to the whole business, and treaties between 
England and the Arab chiefs not only put a stop 
to the piracy, but gave England the official status 
of protector of the Persian Gulf, with rights in the 
disposal of the lands on its coasts. Thus, finally, 
a quarter of a century before the Great War 
began, England's constant guardianship of the 
Persian Gulf for more than two hundred years, to 
the great benefit of both Arabia and Persia, was 
officially as well as unofficially rewarded. Her 
*^ wedge" in the gulf was a respected fact. 



PREPARINa FOR THE PLAY 15 

But where was Turkey all this time! Turkey 
had not thought far ahead either. To her the 
lower Mesopotamia region was not worth a great 
deal of bother. She could collect taxes from the 
native inhabitants only as far as her guns could 
reach to conquer the Arab tribes ; and the possible 
taxes, except from the date trees, were not worth 
a great deal of sacrifice. Turkey's *^ squeeze" 
method of government was of little use where 
there was little to be squeezed. On the routes of 
the big Mohammedan pilgrimages the system was 
profitable enough, for the ofiicials could block the 
roads to the sacred shrines and take away what- 
ever money the travelers had — if the Arab high- 
waymen on the road had left them any. But the 
possible tolls were slight near the Persian Gulf. 
There has always been a close race between the 
Turkish officials and the Arab highwaymen, and in 
many cases the officials, by putting their posts far 
enough ahead along the roads, have beaten out the 
Arabs. It is a good illustration of the German 
philosophy of the survival of the fittest. 

One of the Turkish governors was so indifferent 
to Mesopotamia south of Bagdad that he was will- 



16 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

ing England should take it off his hands, if she 
would. But England refused. If she could only- 
have pictured the Kaiser of a few years later! 
Perhaps the British wedge would have reached 
up to Bagdad. 

But the chance was gone. The moves of Turkey 
and Germany, with ideas of greater depth than 
anyone imagined, were about to commence. A few 
years after the first great treaty between the Brit- 
ish and the Arab chiefs, the new Vali of Bagdad, 
the Turkish governor of the District, marched a 
good-sized army through Mesopotamia and 
started after the Arabian towns on the shore of 
the Persian Gulf. England was overlord of the 
gulf and hers was the power of disposal of lands 
on the Arabian and Persian shores. But she ob- 
jected little to this extension of Turkey's realm. 
It seemed unimportant, in view of the fact that the 
Arabs would not acknowledge Turkish overlord- 
ship except with Turkish guns under their noses. 
But attempts at expansion which followed were 
fought a little more strenuously, though even then 
there appeared to be no great international prob- 
lems at stake. 



PEEPARING FOE THE PLAY 17 

With the accession of William II to the German 
throne a new light appeared on the situation. Out 
of a most casual difference between Turkey and 
England developed a colossal struggle. If the 
British were not interested in Mesopotamia, the 
Kaiser was. A route through Mesopotamia to the 
Persian Gulf would be a quick way of getting to 
India and would give a chance to rush something 
serious down that way in a very short time. The 
great ^*open highway" across the country to the 
east would be a fact. It would balance England's 
advantage in the Suez Canal. The Pan-German 
plan was just getting under way. Slowly but 
surely the time was coming when the little Brit- 
ish wedge in the Persian Gulf should become the 
great kink in the Pan-German plan for world 
conquest. 

With the visit of the Emperor to Constantinople 
in 1889 began the war against the British in Meso- 
potamia. For years it had been concealed ; now it 
was in the open, but fruitless. 

The plans of the Kaiser were deep. England 
was in a little difficulty with Turkey over the war 
in Egypt, relations between the two countries 



18 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

were not too good in tlie Persian Gulf, and the 
Sultan was quite ready to ally himself, or sell him- 
self, to Germany for the rich rewards which would 
come from the Kaiser's schemes. As Defender of 
Islam and protector of the Turkish throne. Em- 
peror William was master of Turkey. Turkey 
needed cultivation, especially the part of Turkey 
known as Mesopotamia. A railway through there 
would do wonders. It would also be a boon to 
India. The slogan, *^ Hamburg to the Persian 
Gulf," grew in popularity as the realization came 
of the true purpose — ^'Berlin to Bombay and 
Cairo. ' ' The Kaiser had no more idea of cultivat- 
ing Mesopotamia than he had of cultivating 
mumps. Two of his spokesmen belied any state- 
ment he might make concerning that : ^ * Germany 
has no resources in men for opening the Islamic 
world,'' and *' Turkey can never raise enough 
settlers." Nor had he thought out any plan for 
the cooperative control of a railway between 
Europe and British India that would attempt to 
be fair to all nations. But he did have a very 
definite idea that with an army on rails at its 
back, a stronghold at the head of the Persian Gulf 



PREPARING FOR THE PLAY 19 

"Would be a great base of operations toward the 
east. His submarines could renew all the piracy 
of the Arabs, and on a much larger scale. 

The affair began modestly enough. The obscure 
individual who went to set up a small pearl busi- 
ness in the Persian Gulf raised very little stir, 
even though he was a German. But a few years 
later came the startling news that Germany had 
obtained a concession to build a railway from 
**Konia to the Persian Gulf,'' 1,870 miles from 
Constantinople. It would indeed be a fine thing to 
have another railway through Asia, and especially 
in this part. Asia has few enough railways as 
it is. 

But there was certainly something queer about 
the plans of the aforesaid concession. It was cu- 
rious that, if the railway were for commercial 
reasons, the proposed route across should care- 
fully leave out all the regions which gave promise 
of being agricultural districts and go by the short- 
est possible route across the barest desert. Cu- 
rious, too, that any bank should advance money in 
such an enterprise unless said bank had the sanc- 
tion of a great government to back it up. Accord- 



20 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

ing to the plans a German bank was to furnish the 
funds. The Turkish government was to pay back 
the money with interest and also to pay a guar- 
anty on the cost of construction at the rate of 
700 pounds per year per kilometer. Considering 
the fact that Turkey was at the time bankrupt and 
that the Sultan would have no means of paying the 
guaranty alone, not to mention the original funds 
with interest, it seemed as though there must be 
something bigger than a railway scheme behind it. 
Indeed there was. Germany was going to see to it 
that no matter what might happen in the West, the 
East would ultimately decide supremacy. The old 
wars of the ages, from the beginning of empires, 
over control of the East, was to culminate, accord- 
ing to the wishes of Germany, in conquest for the 
Teutons. 

It was hoped by Germany that the duty charges 
on goods sent over the line would in time bring 
into the Turkish treasury from England, which 
was the chief trader with the East, enough to pay 
for the line. But in the meantime Germany would 
become possessor of the land through which the 
railway would run. By the clever ruse of a rail- 



PEEPARING FOR THE PLAY 21 

way she would annex practically all Asia Minor, 
Palestine and Mesopotamia, perhaps Persia. A 
railway would certainly be a good thing — ^but not 
on those terms. 

While the plans were being formed and made 
known to the world, the i>etty merchant in the 
Persian Gulf was being followed by other Ger- 
mans ; some scientists, some engineers looking for 
a good terminus for the railway, some representa- 
tives of rich German firms in hopes of buying 
property on the gulf. Then came attempts to 
prove the Turkish ownership of lands in the gulf, 
since Turkey wished to sell the lands to Germany. 
Finally came attempts by the Turkish government 
to take more land from the Arabs along the coast, 
both by force and by paying Arabs to act as Ger- 
man agents. 

Every attempt to get land by force failed be- 
cause of the presence of British men-of-war. 
Every attempt to get land by stealth failed be- 
cause of the gratitude of the Arabs to England, 
the power that had so long been the patient guard- 
ian of order in the gulf. It speaks well for Eng- 
land's actions in the gulf that every one of the 



22 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Arab Sheikhs at the head of the districts which 
Germany was trying by all manner of means to 
acquire, stood firm by Great Britain and refused 
to let any land go without her consent. 

When this failed, the next move was to make the 
affair an international contest, to challenge Eng- 
land's right to predominate influence in the gulf, 
and to make a supposed transgression of German 
*' rights'* a case for international discussion. 
England, some years before, had secured the right 
of trade up the Tigris, and the Lynch Brothers 
were carrying on a prosperous trade between 
Busra and Bagdad. Against this Germany started 
a line of trade with the Persian Gulf. The Ham- 
burg-American line ran some boats to the gulf, 
treating all the nation's head-men to music and 
wine — to win them heartily to Germany. Even 
these means failing to give her control in the gulf, 
Germany played the last card, the card that has 
worked so successfully with other nations since 
the outbreak of the war. She put the matter in 
the hands of the big diplomats of the countries; 
disguising the important matters as unimportant, 
sliding through agreements before their real sig- 



PREPARING FOR THE PLAY 23 

nificance could be grasped, proposing, under pre- 
text of playing a square game with Turkey, a 
plan that meant nothing but the helping of Ger- 
many, Turkey's master. Perhaps if the British 
guardians in the gulf were too alert for any under- 
hand work to succeed, the diplomats in London, 
so far away, might be more easily influenced. 
Fortunately nothing was signed before war broke 
out. Even a few days ' delay in the declaration of 
war might have told. From the job-trader in 
pearls to the deep-dyed plottings of villain diplo- 
mats, every sort of German intrigue had been 
tried. 

In the meantime the railway was being built. 
The section from Bagdad to Samarra was just 
completed. Enough materials were piled up at 
Busra to run a line across the Persian frontier 
and enable the troops of Germany's vassals to 
move against India. 

Germany in India! Germany in Egypt! The 
very thoughts make one shudder. The first year 
of the war would require nearly all of the troops 
in India to help on the western front. India bled 
white, northern Persia turning to Germany, the 



24 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

effect of an attack on either India or Egjrpt might 
be disaster unthinkable. What a chance for in- 
trigue in the Far East Germany would have with 
a line straight from Hamburg to the Bay of Ben- 
gal — and just across the Pacific lay America! 

But with the war came a little British camp 
on the island of Bahrein, not so very far from 
Busra. Was that little camp a part of the World 
War f Indeed it was — and a much more important 
part than it thought. It was starting something 
more than a war between Tommies and Turks. 
The British Empire was at war with the German 
Empire to maintain England's right to her posi- 
tion in the East and to vouchsafe to India and 
Egypt the liberty and peace gained through the 
strong protecting arm of Great Britain. In the 
land where Assyria and Babylon fought for the 
mastery of the East, where a Caliph of Bagdad 
claimed allegiance from the great wall of China 
to the Atlantic, now Turks and Arabs, as tools of 
Germany, were to contend against the power of 
England — ^her navy, her British troops, and her 
dusky warriors of India. 



PEEPARING FOR THE PLAY 25 

Yet this was not to be like the war in France. 
There is all the difference between war in France 
and war in Mesopotamia that there is between 
Paris and Bagdad. 



CHAPTER II 
TRAGEDY— ACT I, PART 1— BRILLIANT SUCCESS 

It was October of 1914 when the brigade from 
Poona pitched camp on the island of Bahrein. 
War between England and Turkey was not de- 
clared until the following month. To the men 
there, waiting to move into Mesopotamia, life was 
interesting enough. They were in the very center 
of the greatest pearl industry in the world. The 
pearls from all over the great pearl bank of the 
Persian Gulf came on the clumsy old dhows to 
the snug little island in behind a neck of the 
Arabian shore. It was fine to watch the Arabs at 
their work, and to get used to their life. They 
looked just like the characters of the Old Testa- 
ment and time seemed to turn back twenty cen- 
turies. Perhaps some of these fellows were Wise 
Men or Prophets. 

Some of the more imaginative of the officers of 
the brigade looked forward with a curious thrill 

26 



BRILLIANT SUCCESS 27 

to fighting in the land where onoe the heads of the 
world's great empires of the East led their 
armies. And they seemed to feel a peculiar satis- 
faction in the thought that Bagdad was in that 
land. They were wont to look over the blue water 
of the gulf and see in the mist that hung between 
the waves and the clouds all sorts of beautiful pic- 
tures of golden Bagdad, with glistening domes, 
and palaces, and richly dressed ladies of court. 
Most of these twentieth-century soldiers, how- 
ever, were too prosaic for any such thoughts as 
these. They saw nothing in the patter of the 
dreamer who found so much to think about in this 
land of the dim past. Their care was for the pres- 
ent. Their only interest was the daily practicing 
for the landing in boats on the shores of Meso- 
potamia. They were thinking of the hardships 
that awaited them in Mesopotamia. The thunder- 
storms in the gulf were bad enough. They knew 
that the country was just one vast plain where 
nothing grew except shrubs, and these only here 
and there along the banks of the two winding, 
muddy rivers that wriggled through the land like 
two snakes through a deserted field. Because 

\ 

i 



28 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

there was nothing growing there were continually 
terrific dust storms, swooping over the plains, 
sped on by the burning winds. This they knew. 
Imagination was a fine thing in the cool evenings 
with the wonderful Eastern sunsets ; but with the 
hot sun shiaing down on the Arabian island, fact 
won the day. Mesopotamia, by common consent, 
was to be hot and dry and dusty and miserable. 

At Bahrein the peaceful native people at their 
labor of pearls certainly made war seem far away. 
Perhaps there would not be war with Turkey after 
all. But things were moving faster in other parts 
of the world. Turkey, as vassal of Germany and 
as official overlord of Mesopotamia, was about to 
make trouble ; not, perhaps, because she wanted to, 
but because it was the Kaiser's will. 

The British subjects in Busra and Bagdad were 
getting nervous about staying where they were. 
Many of them got away. Some from Busra got to 
Mohamera, the big station of the Anglo-Persian 
Oil Company, where they were safe on Persian 
soil. Then word came that at Constantinople the 
British representative had asked for his passports 
and that no more British subjects would be al- 



BRILLIANT SUCCESS 29 

lowed to leave Busra or Bagdad. That really- 
looked serious. The British gunboat H. M. 8. 
Espiegle, lying in the Shat-al-Arab near the oil 
works, stripped for action with her six four-inch 
guns. It was none too soon. From the council 
halls of Europe war was declared between Eng- 
land and Turkey. 

The curtain rolled up at the word **war.'' On 
receipt of a radio-message from India the force on 
the island of Bahrein broke camp, embarked and 
entered the stage. The declaration of war came 
on November fifth. The force stepped on the 
stage on the sixth, at the mouth of the Shat-al- 
Arab, the estuary of the Tigris and Euphrates. 

The first glimpse of the desert land was a com- 
plete surprise. On both sides of the winding river 
were masses of beautiful palm trees, marshes and 
shrubs. *^It's the garden of Eden, sure enough/' 
said one of the young officers. **Look at the trees. 
Who said it was all desert?" ** Desolate'' surely 
could not be the word to use for that inviting 
shore. Palms grew in perfect lines out from the 
river, about two miles. Between each two lines 
was a small canal leading the water in from the 



30 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

river. Once in a while the boats passed an open- 
ing in the forests of palms. Through the spa<5e 
could be seen bare flat plains, stretching far away 
from the river, past the fringe of palms, it seemed, 
to very eternity. It was indeed lovely. But other, 
less imaginative men were scanning all the land 
in sight for signs of Turkish forts, of guns, or of 
troops. To them it was no time to wonder about 
the scenery. They had a part to play. 

A few Turkish guns were in position near the 
mouth of the Shat-al-Arab. A strenuous bom- 
bardment soon silenced them. A little way up the 
river, past a few of the bends, at the little town of 
Fao, was a Turkish fort, built many years before 
when Turkey first came to the gulf with serious 
intentions. It was just a wee structure which to 
all appearances might have been a fort built by 
some boys in the sand at the seashore. It seemed 
like a toy war that this brigade was starting ; al- 
most as ridiculous as though the armies had 
decided to fight with pop guns. 

Not even the most pessimistic of those men 
present at the first encounter had the slightest 
idea that it would cost England so much in men 



BEILLIANT SUCCESS 31 

and money to finish the campaign that began with 
the leveling of the little mnd fort at Fao. The 
guns of the small fleet had accomplished that task 
in short order. Some six hundred men with a 
section of artillery landed to clinch the victory at 
Fao, and the flotilla of transports and gunboats 
steamed farther up the river. As the landed 
troops watched them go up stream they might 
well have asked, *^Are they going to Bagdad T^ 

The advance had begun ; and no one could say 
where it would stop. The very first necessity was 
to protect the top of the gulf and that part of 
Persia where the great oil supply flowed through 
pipes to the refinery on the Shat-al-Arab. A blow 
at that line by the Turks would mean the de- 
struction of works that had cost tremendously in 
money and men. 

A Persian company first cunk a million pounds 
in the oil business. It soon found that it cost ten 
pounds to transport over the endless hills and 
plains the oil that would have to sell for four 
pounds. When that company went up in smoke, 
an English capitalist undertook the good work. 
Under the direction of an expert engineer, three 



32 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

hundred and sixty miles of pipe line were laid to 
convey the oil from the naphtha fields in north 
Persia, over the mountains of Luristan, across the 
arid wastes of Aribistan to the ports of Mohamera 
and Abidan. It took patience and courage to com- 
plete the undertaking after the failure of the 
Persian firm; and the line was worth protecting 
now. It had benefited the people and the govern- 
ment of Persia more than they knew. The seven 
thousand employees at the refining works would 
need considerable protection. The little gunboat 
Espiegle was at its post to protect the terminus of 
the pipe at Mohamera and Abidan. But it would 
do little good to protect the end of the line and let 
the rest be cut to pieces by Turks and Arabs. 

Two more brigades arrived on November 14 to 
reenforce the one already operating, making the 
British force of occupation one division under the 
command of General Barrett. Nothing was occu- 
pied as yet, but the advance to Busra was made 
in a few days. A most curious sort of advance it 
was. The Turks ' resistance soon broke and they 
made for the ^*date town'' with their pursuers 
hot after them, fighting in the woods of date 



BRILLIANT SUCCESS 33 

pabns, in the marshes and on the plains. The 
boats on the river increased the speed of the rout, 
by dropping a few shells in from the side. The 
men on the gunboats soon found that their guns 
were the only ones in action. How strange that 
the land batteries should stop when there was such 
a good harvest in store for their shells! The 
explanation, made clear at last, was that though 
the enemy was plainly visible from the high decks 
of the steamer the retreating Turks were com- 
pletely concealed from the eyes of the British on 
land by the mirage, that fiend of the desert. The 
palms seemed to be growing in the air and to rise 
and fall like the side of a great bellows. As for 
the Turks, they neither rose nor fell. They were 
nowhere. 

There was a great celebration in Busra at the 
changing of governors. The dignitaries met the 
commanders of the force and a lengthy procla- 
mation of good intentions followed. The German 
Consul and five other Germans were shipped to 
India. Even Arabs, after experiencing Turkish 
rule for a short time, were glad to see the greedy 
governors and officials leave. The townspeople 



34 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

lined the banks of the only good canal that re- 
mains to the ^^ Venice of the East" and joined in 
the hearty welcome to the force that had rid them 
of the unspeakable Turk. Some of the Arabs had 
joined in the sport of war while the advance to 
Busra was on, by deserting from their supposed 
places in the Turkish army and plundering the 
Turkish wounded as they fell on the field. 

Soon after the first of December Kurna met 
the fate of Busra. A unique fleet aided in the 
capture of Kurna. As there were few gunboats 
available, Arab scows, **mahailas'' and *^bal- 
lams, ' ' big, clumsy boats that might have belonged 
to the cave-man period, were pressed into the ser- 
vice. With iron plates on the sides and across the 
top, these ancient hulls became armored cruisers. 
But this queer-looking fleet did its work well and 
Kurna fell with but few casualties. Kurna is 
about thirty miles by river north of Busra. The 
Euphrates used to join the Tigris at this place, 
though now only a small stream from the Eu- 
phrates enters here and the main current flows 
into the Tigris at Busra. With both these junc- 
tures of the two rivers taken, the British could 




The highway of Busra, the "Venice of the East" 
(From a plwtogrnph hi/ Mr. Weir Sfeirarf). 




Arab huts on the bank of the Tiufris 



BEILLIANT SUCCESS 35 

control both rivers and make Busra doubly safe. 
Likewise the Kurnn Eiver in Persia, along which 
the pipe line was laid, might be guarded more 
easily. A force stretched along that river as far 
as Ahwaz. Busra, the gulf and the oil-line were 
safe. 

The days of December were not like those of 
summer, and there were no stoves. It was cold 
and damp and disagreeable, there at Kuma. The 
Arab belief that at that very spot was the Garden 
of Eden seemed to have little application to the 
barren, shivery spot where the force pitched 
camp. It might have been accepted down near 
Busra, where there were beautiful date groves, 
but near the camp of the British at Kurna 
there was nothing but barren plain. Everybody 
called it desert — for nothing grew but the bristly 
kind of stubble that insists upon growing where 
nothing else can live. 

Early one morning, when it was cold and felt 
like rain, a Tommy from London, a ^^pucca Cock- 
ney, ' ' gingerly slid out of his blankets to perform 
his morning task of stewing up a Dixie of tea. 
**Brrr " he said and shook all over. He looked 



36 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

around at the bleak landscape; nothing but dirt, 
and a little mud, to be seen. He kicked a chum 
who was sleeping on the ground at his feet. ' ' Say ! 
Call this the Garden of Heden? If this was the 
blumin' Garden of Heden hi don't blame the 
twelve hapostles for gittin' out of it.'' A con- 
fused jumble of words built on the dominant 
** bloody" came from some part of the blanket that 
was kicked for the sake of giving utterance to this 
bit of wisdom. 

That kind of weather is not designed for com- 
fort, nor is it conducive to a desire to sit still. 
Just a move for the sake of moving is enough. 
Besides, the Turks were beaten easily enough. 
Why not straf them some more ? 

But the experiences of the Egyptian campaign 
had taught the authorities in London a few les- 
sons about desert warfare. One of them was that 
once you start into an open country, especially 
such a country as Mesopotamia, where the fighting 
has to follow several rivers, it is hard to know 
where to stop. The objectives are liable to be 
indefinite. ^^A safe game must be played in Meso- 
potamia." That was the note struck in London 



BEILLIANT SUCCESS 37 

at the start of the Mesopotamia campaign. A safe 
game meant occupation and defense. That was 
already accomplished. It seemed that everything 
that brought the force to Mesopotamia was fin- 
ished. Would that the play could have ended here 
with the assurance that the force lived happily 
and heartily ever after ! For the sake of the killed 
and wounded, would that it had ended here ! 

But Ahwaz was far from Bagdad. So were 
Busra and Kurna. During the month of March 
some savage attacks by the Turks showed that the 
sting of the British blow in Mesopotamia was 
keenly felt somewhere, probably in Berlin. An 
attack toward the pipe line in Persia, not far from 
Ahwaz, by 12,000 Turks, and an attack at Shaiba 
from Busra by 1,500 Turk horsemen, ^^put the 
wind up the British.'' It was clear that they had 
started the defense of the pipe line none too soon. 
It looked as though it would be necessary to take 
a position still farther up the river to make the 
possessions really safe. 

Another British division landed at Busra. The 
force was fast growing. Sir Arthur Barrett, com- 
mander in chief in Mesopotamia, being ill, handed 



38 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

over tlie command to Sir John Nixon. A new 
name was now at the top of the list of characters 
for the side show. But Sir John Nixon already 
knew the stage and the scenery. His father had 
been at one time Consul-General at Bagdad. 

The campaign which he set himself to carry out 
was **to take active measures against the enemy. ^' 
That might suggest any far-off goal, limited only 
by the stretch of the imagination. The words from 
London came like writing on the wall — **A safe 
game must be played in Mesopotamia.'* 

In accordance with that warning the slogan of 
the force should have been, **We'll hold back the 
Turks at any cost." But the fever to **get on 
with it" was fast growing. The slogan was be- 
coming, ^^We'll beat back the Turks wherever 
they are." That sounded dangerous. Starting 
out on three rivers to beat up the Turks is a con- 
siderable task, hardly in sympathy with the warn- 
ing from home. At that very critical time in the 
war there was no prospect of having a large num- 
ber of reenf orcements to draw upon. The request 
for troops to fight in the Dardanelles had been 
refused. What chance had the Mesopotamia side 



40 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

show of getting more troops ? With the Kaiser so 
busy in France and Russia a small force at the 
head of the Persian Gulf would be able to hold 
back what little strength he could use in that part 
of the world. **At the head of the Persian Gulf^' 
sounded all right, but the force was already a long 
way above that and ready for another move. 

The aggressive spirit of the Mesopotamia force 
was soon rewarded by brilliant victories. The first 
object of its spirit was Amara, eighty-five miles 
along the winding river north of Kurna. The 
attack on Amara was so unusual as to be comical. 
It was decided to have as large a fleet as possible 
to act with the land force on the march. The gun- 
boat Cornet and three tugs formed the fleet. The 
ordinary use of the tugs was transporting sup- 
plies, but they served well enough as men-of-war 
if there need be little fighting. The advance be- 
gan, time had slipped around to June and the 
scorching days of summer were setting in. With 
the mosquitos and the sand fleas, burning wind 
and pests of flies, the force felt indeed as though 
it were being driven out of the Garden of Eden. 

There was heavy fighting on the way to Amara. 



BEILLIANT SUCCESS 41 

Again the fighting was disturbed by the beastly- 
mirage. Suddenly a caravan behind appeared to 
be walking in the air. Mud villages of the Arabs 
rose and fell as though on a rolling sea. A shim- 
mery lake appeared in the distance — only to dis- 
appear or gradually move away. But the Turks 
were again routed. Urged on by the victory and 
by the spirit of adventure, the flotilla of tugs 
pushed on past the land force. This little fleet has 
become famous as the victorious *'Townshend's 
Eegatta. ' ' With the troops a day's march behind, 
the flotilla arrived at Amara. Most of the boats 
would have failed the simplest test as fighting 
ships. I have been told that two of them could not 
have shot over the bank, their guns were mounted 
so low. They could have shot at some birds in the 
air or men standing right on the bank of the river 
but that would not take the town. 

Nevertheless, the British Command boldly de- 
manded that the Turks at Amara surrender. The 
news of the rout of the army down the river had 
reached the town and the whole town garrison 
of seven hundred men surrendered rather than 
venture into another bit of confusion with this 



42 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

strange-looking fleet. What the tugs were to do 
with those seven hundred men was a question. 
The embarrassment of having prisoners and no 
force to take care of them grew as the day went 
on. The land force was still far away. There 
were some nervous hours for the men on the boats 
as they waited for the pursuing army to reach 
Amara. Suppose something should go wrong! 
But with Townshend things did not go wrong. 
The Turks, as they looked at the little tugs, were 
beginning to itch to raid them instead of sitting 
aimlessly as prisoners, when their friends on the 
retreat began to fall back to the town, and the 
victorious British army appeared. The ** war- 
ship ' ' commanders breathed a sigh of relief when 
the surrendered garrison were marched to the 
rear. It had been an exciting day. 

In the advance to Amara over two thousand 
prisoners were taken and as the British officers in 
their new mess halls sat around talking over the 
eventful days, there were few who were not of the 
opinion that the little force on the Tigris could 
tackle any task whatever. Again the warning 
came, *'A safe game must be played in Meso- 



BRILLIANT SUCCESS 43 

potamia/' The force at the new British town of 
Amara were in a mood to laugh at that warning. 
If they had been less respectful perhaps some of 
them would have laughed. 

The next objective was the town of Nasarie, on 
the Euphrates. The capture of this town would 
make Busra still safer and would give to the Brit- 
ish the main position on the Euphrates. From the 
political point of view the capture of the town 
would be very important, for from there the 
Arabs on the Euphrates might be influenced to 
loyalty to the British. Arabs everywhere clung to 
the Turks because of the tie of Mohammedanism, 
but were very glad to be rid of them as overlords. 
The trouble between the Arabs and the Turks 
near Mecca, across the Arabian desert, was under 
way. The demand for a free Arabia was growing. 
The Arabs looked to England to help them as she 
had helped Egypt. Every district of Arabia 
drawn to England weakened the war strength 
of the Turks. It would be well to have Nasarie, 
on the Euphrates. 

A little over a month after the brilliant capture 
of Amara, Nasarie fell, with almost as many pris- 



44 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

oners as were taken at Amara, and a dozen Turk- 
ish guns. Nasarie lay at the southern end of the 
river Hai. Once the main current of the Tigris 
but now a small river, the Hai was a connectiQg 
link between the Tigris and the Euphrates. It 
brought a small amount of the water of the Tigris 
down to the Euphrates, to join the Tigris again 
at Kurna and Busra. At the northern end of the 
little stream lay Kut-al-Amara and at Kut-al- 
Amara was the Turkish general Nur-ed-din, the 
^^ Light of the Faith. '^ It would surely be wise to 
take Kut, now that the lower part of the river 
Hai was in British hands. 

So it went. German schemes against Busra and 
the oil supply had led to Kurna and Ahwaz. 
Kurna and Ahwaz led to Amara and Nasarie. 
Now Nasarie and the river Hai pointed straight 
to Kut and the Turk Nur-ed-din. Suppose Kut 
fell — and there was every reason to believe that 
the spirit which took Amara and Nasarie would 
succeed at Kut — what would Kut point to 1 There 
was only one place for it to point — Bagdad. The 
heat grew worse and life became a burden. This 
was no toy war now. 



CHAPTEE III 

TRAGEDY— ACT I, PART 2— THE ADVANCE TOWARD 
BAGDAD 

Camp at Amara was getting settled. Lieutenant 

H ■ walked into his mess anteroom, once the 

office of a Turkish official, in the mud-brick offi- 
cers' quarters on the river front. His eyes were 
swollen with the heat and the burning dust that 
was blowing over the plains. His light khaki drill 
shorts and shirt were wringing wet with perspir- 
ation. He threw off his sun helmet and fell limp 
into a chair. ' ' Got a letter today, ' ' he said, ' ' from 
the lady. She says she 's glad we are away out in 
Mesopotamia where we do not have to suffer the 
tortures of the French front. ' ' He looked around 
at his fellow officers who were lounging in the 
room, trying to keep cool. They all understood 
what he was thinking about and nodded approval. 
*'I suppose, *' he went on, *^that people home think 
we are just here on sort of a picnic, straffing the 

45 



46 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Turks for exercise. I wouldn't mind the beastly 
job if it weren't so thankless. Imagine being glad 
we are escaping the tortures of the French front 
with the temperature inside the tents a hundred 
and ten and everybody being laid up with fever 
or sunstroke or something ! Perhaps the lady pic- 
tures me dressed in the Sultan's best robes and 
sitting in the middle of a court with dark-skinned 
lackeys to fan me all day long and nothing to do 
but drink coffee and smoke my hubble-bubble, like 
these bally Arabs. We're not in Bagdad yet." 

*^Yet " that is significant. A while before 

there would have been no idea of ever actually 
being in Bagdad. Now it seemed only a matter of 
time. 

**But we can't kick, at that," said one of the 
loungers. *^It may be hot, but it's a lot better 
to have a war out here in the deserts where you 
can't hurt anything than to have to fight over the 
beautiful villages of France. If there 's got to be 
war it might as well be here. If they ran the 
whole war out here we could all go home at the end 
and find our homes just as we left them. ' ' 

He was dead right. The show that they had 



THE ADVANCE 47 

started in Mesopotamia was an ideal war. It was 
like two schoolboys going out into a vacant lot far 
away from the crowd and having it out in a real 
good scrap. Passing by all the towns on the Ti- 
gris and Euphrates without dropping a single 
shell into them, the forces there were doing all 
their fighting out in the plains where there was 
nothing to hurt ; and where there were no villages 
to leave in ruins and no villagers but the wander- 
ing Arabs, who were always far out of danger. 
From that point of view, war in Mesopotamia 
appeals to us all. I have been through peaceful 
France and have loved it as everyone who loves 
beauty must. The ridges of hills, the pretty wind- 
ing streams flowing between beautiful green banks 
dotted with wild flowers, have brought to me that 
joy that nature's perfect beauty brings. The end- 
less rows of rich farms and quaint little farm- 
houses, the white, smooth roads lined with tall 
green trees, perhaps in the road a donkey cart 
jogging along following a peasant to market, and 
then the villages, groups of inviting houses in a 
maze of green — that is the lovable country of 



48 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

France. War has changed all that, wherever it 
has gone. 

The ridges and valleys are masses of shell 
craters now. The banks of the streams are lines 
of trenches. The green of the trees has changed 
to a black char of scorched stumps. The pleasant 
towns and villages are heaps of broken walls and 
jumbles of ruins. Everyone knows what that 
means to the people who once lived their happy 
lives in the little towns of beautiful France. That 
is too awful to speak of. We must fight because 
of that. 

But there is no chance for that ruin in Meso- 
potamia. War there is war in its simplest state. 
It stands out in bold outline against the horrors 
of the tumult in France. The ruins in France are 
the ruins of Prussian greed. There are no ruins 
in Mesopotamia but the ruins of time. The agony 
in France is the agony of ruined homes and ruined 
lives. There is little of that in Mesopotamia. It 
is still war, there, but it is war off in exile from 
the world, war without all the social evils of the 
western front and without all the inhumanness of 
Germany. On the western front there are war 



THE ADVANCE 49 

implements which the world in its right mind will 
not tolerate. In Mesopotamia the war is a war of 
bullets, as it was many years ago. In the deserts 
there are no Germans, running wild in their bru- 
tality at the bidding of their war lords. There are 
atrocities even on the arid plains of Arabia, but 
they come from the people themselves, the blood- 
thirsty Arabs. It is war on the western front 
turned upside down. The devilish cruelties of war 
come not upon the people of the land, but from 
them. 

Would that the whole war could be fought in the 
desert lands, where there can be no more ruins, 
where there are no beautiful towns and villages, 
where there are no beautiful streams and woods 
and hills and valleys, where the birds of our world 
never sing and where the beauties of the peaceful, 
innocent life of villages in France are not known ! 
But no — the deserts are only for a side show. The 
main show goes steadily on over land that is 
meant for peace. We may find on the western 
front the exhibitions of strength and cunning, but 
in Mesopotamia we see war as we used to imagine 
it and get anew a faith that man is still human. 



50 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

That is what was in the mind of the lady who 
wrote to her dear husband in Mesopotamia to say- 
she was glad he could be there instead of in 
France. 

And the thought spread. Amara began to seem 
quite livable after all. There was a chance for a 
fairly clean swim in the river in the cool of the 
evening. Several chaps got nipped by some sort 
of fish — they were sure it was Jonah's whale — 
but a chance to cool off was worth the risk. With 
the aid of a little sense of humor the antics of the 
Arabs alone were worth the price of admission. 

The Arabs had some doubts about their new 
masters for a while. They hesitated to take the 
English paper money and there was a run on the 
field treasurer for silver. The Arabs cared little 
about the Indians and the feeling was recipro- 
cated. The Indians felt far superior to mere 
Arabs. It was funny to see the grades of stand- 
ing, from Arabs to Tommies. Some Arabs were 
walking along the bund by the river where there 
was room only for two or three abreast. A section 
of Indians of a coolie labor-corps approached 
them from the opposite direction. They might l^ 



THE ADVANCE 51 

have found room to pass, but no, the Arabs must 
jump down to the water to let the Indians have 
the whole bund. No sooner had the Indians kicked 
all the Arabs off the bund than there came along 
some Tom mi es leading a cart with some stores. 
Off went the Indians this time. The Arabs looked 
at the Indians and grinned. The Indians looked 
at the Arabs and scowled, and the Tommies no- 
ticed nothing. 

The Indians felt grieved because the Arab 
** bazaar wallas'' or merchants could not be bar- 
gained with as easily as the *^ bazaar wallas" in 
India, but they felt very much above them as part 
of the force. The Indian sentries felt a special 
pride in their position because they had orders to 
shoot an Arab at sight, after dark. 

One fellow had an experience that made him a 
little doubtful of his superiority. It was a rather 
dark night, but in the dimness the sentry saw 
something moving, not far from camp. He 
shouted ^^Halt." The figure kept moving as 
though he did not hear. Again the Indian shouted, 
but the figure still moved along steadily. Then 
aiming in hopes of hitting it if it were an Arab 



52 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

and missing it if it were not, lie fired. The fignre 
dropped. Trembling with excitement at the idea 
of being able to report that he had shot a '^hudoo" 
the Indian approached the spot where the figure 
had dropped. Nothing was stirring. He must 
have hit him. He walked nearer. Now he could 
make out the shape. It was a man. in a huddled 
position. 

Knowing no Arabic except the word ^^ Arabi'^ 
and no English but the challenge, *^Halt! Who 
goes there? '^ he gave that for the sake of the heap 
on the ground. Nothing stirred. The Arab was 
surely dead. Convinced that he had a prize, the 
sentry walked forward and in his glee was about 
to kick the dead man when up got the Arab, seized 
the gun from the Indiaa, and made across the 
desert, never again to be seen. 

I ran into some Tommies one day who were 
having out some of the old stories about the first 
days of the campaign. Their tales of the exploits 
of the Arabs were enough to recommend the fel- 
lows to a circus. **I woke up one night and 
thought I'd been touched," I heard one say. **In 
a deep voice I says, * Who 's there ? ' There wasn 't 



THE ADVANCE 53 

anything movin' so I thought I'd take my rifle an' 
see if there was anything up. I felt under me, for 
I was sleepin' on the thing, but it wasn't there. 
I thought mebbe I'd moved in my sleep, so I felt 
over toward my chum on the right to make sure. 
By mistake I stuck my hand in his face and by the 
variety of his cussin' I knew I was in the right 
place. *Have you seen my gunT I says, but he 
hadn't anything more to say about the blinkin' 
rifle than he had for the punch in the face. Then< 
all of a sudden he let out a shout and says, 
* Where's mine!' We knew there was something 
up then an' we woke up the rest of the chaps. 
There was nine of us in the tent and nine rifles 
missing. Most of us had 'em under us too. We 
never did find the bally loose-wallas." 

* * Our Brigade Commander was peacefully snor- 
ing in his tent one night," said another, ''when 
suddenly it takes legs and skoots off out of sight. 
The loose-wallas had already taken all his kit 
and uniform, but not content with that they got 
away with his blinkin' tent, poles an' all. The 
General never woke up. Next mornin' he was 
around in the worn-out duds of Captain K . 



54 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

It was a treat to see him. The uniform fitted him 
where it touched him." 

I can easily believe any story I may hear about 
the Arabs as thieves and I am most happy that 
there are not many of them in the other countries 
of the world. During the year I was among them, 
there was plenty of proof that nothing was beyond 
the sly fellows. Always barefoot, always prowl- 
ing aroimd, they seemed to have as part of their 
make-up the knack of getting away with stolen 
goods. I do not wonder that the people of Bag- 
dad believed in genii. 

The Arabs live in villages that disappear as 
completely as the things they steal. Now you see 
them and now you don't. The river never gives 
them a chance to cultivate the land without going 
to a lot of trouble and it is easier to wander and 
steal. When the river falls they have to pull the 
water up in goatskin bags, over pulleys, and when 
the river is in flood they have to build bunds to 
save their scanty crops. So most of them give it 
up, live on cucumbers and a kind of bread made 
from grain that will grow almost anywhere, and 
wander with their sheep and what cattle they may 



THE ADVANCE 55 

have. When they settle, they live in their little 
mud hnts or tents made of skin and whatever can- 
vas they can get from stolen tents; and when it 
is time to move, pack up their donkeys, drive 
along their cattle and pitch camp somewhere else. 

Every time they wander they get more wild. 
The men gradually drift away from their fam- 
ilies to join bands that go in for robbery on a large 
scale. These bands kept some of the force at 
Amara busy acting as posses. If there was a 
chance, the bands would break through the line of 
communication along the river and attack in force 
some slightly isolated camp. A small detail of 
mounted troops that was riding outside the line of 
communication, one night, found to its surprise 
that it was being surrounded by a much larger 
band of Arabs. They were out looking for Arabs, 
but not for Arabs in such force. Luckily they got 
away and managed to do a little damage to the 
Arabs. They escaped terrible punishment, for the 
bloodthirsty Arabs have no pity on the victims 
who fall into their hands. 

The time was not far off when the fighting 
against the plundering and the thieving of Arabs 



56 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

was to give place to more fighting of Turks. The 
rmnor of a move from Amara to Kut was grow- 
ing. There were Jews from Bagdad in Amara, 
who through some mysterious means, received the 
news that the Turks were expecting the British 
to make a stab for Bagdad. They said confi- 
dentially that the British had better hurry up. 

To take Kut, the strong Turkish position about 
a hundred miles up the river from Amara, ought 
to mean Bagdad. If the Turks could be routed at 
Kut they could be kept on the run all the way. 
As the rumor spread, the excitement spread, and 
the force was anxious to *^get on with it.'* The 
thought of the great victories at Amara and Na- 
sarie called for more victories like them. Every- 
one was confident. 

Finally the orders came. They meant Kut. The 
weather was still *^hell,'' or perhaps worse. 
Thanks to the cautiousness of the Turks, they were 
far up the river in good positions. There was no 
opposition on the march and General Townshend, 
at the head of the force, moved slowly toward Kut. 
A hasty march, those sweltering days at the end 
of August, would have meant hundreds of deaths 



THE ADVANCE 57 

from heat. The cooler weather, especially in the 
evenings of September, was a big relief. There 
was something of ^*fighf in the air. 

On one of those fine clear twilights that come 
only in such a barren country as Mesopotamia, 
the force was encamped four miles from the 
Turks. Seven miles farther on lay Kut, the city 
that controlled the Hai. Between the first line of 
Turks and Kut lay miles of strong trenches on 
both sides of the river. To take those one after 
another seemed an impossible task. But not for a 
strategist, and such was General Townshend. It 
appealed to the red-blooded fighter who had had 
so many brilliant victories and had met so many 
difficult situations, always with the same indomi- 
table spirit. Both on the Nile and in South Africa 
Townshend had shown himself in every sense a 
soldier and a general. Here was a chance he 
loved. He could use his cavalry, he could use his 
sweeping flank attacks, but above all he could use 
his head. 

In his camp, now, there were some who had seen 
service in France. The war had been going on for 
a year and was getting to be an old story. One 



58 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

man, whom I afterward met, reached the Tigris 
front about the time of the march to Kut. He was 
stiU fresh enough from the other front to be using 
the expressions that are common parlance in 
France but never heard of in Mesopotamia. He 
often complained that there were no ^^nice farm 
houses,'' that there were no peasants around to 
try his French on, and no nice ** barns" for billets. 
But when the time came for action his tune 
changed. * * I thought the world had gone back on 
the good old fighting," he would say, *^but Mespot 
has redeemed it. I used to lie awake in France 
thinking of the fighting of the old days. I would 
doze otf and dream of a wild dash across a bare 
battlefield! — a rout of the enemy — surrounding 
them — then I would wake up in a sweat to find 
that we were still holding the same bit of trench, 
that we still had no rumor of a move. This kind 
of war out here is the style. My ! a man gets a real 
chance here; a chance to use his head, a chance 
for the cleverest kind of strategy. I'd stick any 
kind of climate for this." 

Everyone knew that the General would find a 
way to win. Everyone was game. Nothing stirred 



THE ADVANCE 59 

till everything was ready. Then it was up and 
away like a shot. Orders said to proceed across 
the river to the south bank and attack the trenches 
there. There was something between the lines of 
that order. Everyone had an idea what it might 
'^. Some knew. The Turks were to be drawn 
^ V er to the southern bank by a feint there. The 
force was then to cross back to the north bank and 
attack the Turks on the extreme northern flank. 
The bridge was padded with mud to deaden the 
sound. 

A long day's bombardment with infantry at- 
tacks on the south bank had the desired effect. 
The Turks came over. During the night came 
the silent crossing. Every ear was waiting for 
reports that the Turks were crossing back too. 
They did not cross — ^the feint was a success. The 
chance at the flank had come at last. It was bril- 
liant. The cavalry and armored cars hit it as 
though shot out of a cannon. Next to them came 
an infantry brigade. The rest of the infantry 
attacked nearer the river. The Turks fought well 
but they could not stand that onslaught. Much of 
tbeir strength was on the other side of the river. 



60 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

The flank collapsed. Now, behind the Turkish 
trenches the cavalry made for the river. 

Suddenly, from the direction of Knt, came 
enemy reserves. Without a moment's hesitation 
the infantry and cavalry that had turned the flank 
made for the oncoming reserves. It was midday 
of the second day of continuous fighting — and 
hot — but on they went, thirst and fatigue entirely 
forgotten. They made for the Turks across land 
as open and flat as a billiard table. Then followed 
a terrific hand-to-hand encounter. It was stren- 
uous, ghastly — but it was victorious. The Turk- 
ish force cut and ran. Kut-al-Amara was Town- 
shend's prize. 

On past the town he followed the fleeing enemy. 
Not till he was halfway to Bagdad did he stop for 
rest. Then everyone sat down to think a while. 
Things had moved very rapidly. It was time 
they took stock of the situation. Only a few 
months before the little force at Kuma was act- 
ing as a defense of the Busra territory and the oil 
refinery. Now here was a force nearly to Bagdad. 
The Turks were still on the run. 

Before long General Townshend reported, *'I 



THE ADVANCE 61 

consider that on all military grounds we should 
consolidate our position at Kut. ' ' He had sent his 
airplanes ahead and had found out the strength 
of the Turks in Bagdad. He found he would need 
a larger force than he then had to beat them. He 
was keen to get on with it if the government 
wanted it, but felt it absolutely necessary to have 
two divisions for the attack, while he had but one, 
and that weakened from the strenuous fighting it 
had done and the effects of the summer heat. 

At any rate Kut was in British hands. Both 
ends of the river Hai were out of the hands of 
Nur-ed-din. Why not stay at Kut? But just as 
Nasarie led to Kut, so Kut led to Bagdad. There 
were many advantages which would accrue from 
the capture of the sacred city. It would mean a 
heavy blow to the Turks and the Germans, with 
their eyes fixed and their hearts pinned on the 
Bagdad railway to India and Egypt. It would 
mean that quantities of Arab tribes hitherto loyal 
to Turkey would come over to loyalty to Great 
Britain, the new protector of the holy city of Bag- 
dad. It would influence the Arabs in western 



'■ 



62 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Arabia who were revolting against the rale of the 
Turks. It would influence the Mohammedans of 
India and Persia, especially those of the Shiah 
sect, and would bind both countries still closer in 
sympathy with England. It would mean the re- 
covery of whatever might be lost in influence 
among the eastern peoples as a whole by the 
bungle at the Dardanelles. It would mean a severe 
blow to the armies of Turkey, as they would have 
to give up any attempts to advance in Persia 
or toward the Suez Canal. 

In view of the advantages of the capture, or 
even of an attack on the city, especially as it would 
effect the Dardanelles talk, the extreme cautious- 
ness of the home government, which had followed 
the campaign thus far as a sort of haunting 
shadow, almost entirely disappeared. 

After a great deal of discussion between the 
commander on the field, Sir John Nixon, the 
Indian government and the home government, 
that government sanctioned the advance if Gen- 
eral Nixon felt confident. Of course he felt con- 
fident. ** Audacity had accomplished wonders; 



THE ADVANCE 63 

was there any limit to its possibilities ! " In view 
of the wonders that audacity had accomplished, it 
would be hard to condemn resorting to it once 
again. The amount of transport, boats and carts, 
was frightfully small. But if everything went 
well there were enough boats for the advance. 
The home government would send out troops to 
hold Bagdad when once it was taken. One more 
plunge, a plunge * * on into Bagdad at the heels of 
the rout," would just do the trick. 

But unfortunately the Turkish retreat was not 
a rout. While the British force was encamped at 
Azizie, to get together and to rest, the Turks were 
intrenching in a strong position nine miles farther 
on, near the great old Arch of Persian Ctesiphon. 
The discussion over the advance had now con- 
sumed a month. With the order to advance, the 
camp broke up and the force that had done great 
things, the force that had shown the greatest pos- 
sible gallantry and doggedness in the battles of 
the past few months, set out resolutely, confident 
in its commander, again to meet the Turks, this 
time to fight for Bagdad. 



64 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

The first act was over. It had been splendid. 
Only the ^^ writing on the waU'* — ^**A safe game 
must be played in Mesopotamia'' — gave any evi- 
dence that the second act might be less happy. 



/ 



CHAPTER IV 
TRAGEDY— ACT II— THE DISASTER 

Camp was pitclied at Lajj, nine miles away from 
the Turkish first line. It was evening. Against 
the blood-red sky of the sunset the Arch of Ctesi- 
phon stood out like a giant boat in a sunset sea. 
That old relic of Sassanian kings, the throne of 
the Chosroes, whose very name was a synonym 
of regal magnificence, had a new meaning that 
night. To get past that meant to get Bagdad. 
All the glory of the red sky, all the mystery of 
the ancient arch, conjured up weird thoughts of 
Bagdad, the royal city. Next day should tell 
whether the great old city of the Caliphs was to 
become British or remain a mud town of Turkish 
Pashas. 

During the night the force broke camp and 
moved toward the spot where, in the sunset hours, 
had appeared that ghastly figure of the arch. It 
was bitter cold, one of those biting November 

65 



66 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

nights, and the thin khaki drill was little pro- 
tection. There was little sleep, even during the 
hours of rest. The Turks were keeping their fires 
burning all night. Why, no one knew. Morning 
found most of the force in nullas or dried water 
channels. They were protections from the eyes 
of the Turks at least, if not from their shells. The 
cold of the night and the loss of sleep had added 
only a few shivers to the excitement. The tension 
was terrific. Victory meant that big arch. That 
would mean Bagdad. It was so near now. 

Think of it — Bagdad! I have never been sure 
what there is about Bagdad which appeals so to 
us all. I suppose anything with a touch of royalty 
still makes our hearts beat faster, even in this 
democracy of ours. Then, too, Bagdad has come 
near to us all in the tales of the *^ Arabian 
Nights." But other names, of places we do not 
know at all, have the same sort of appeal. Man- 
dalay, for instance, by its very sound, when put 
into all kinds of poems and songs, makes them 
popular. 

The orders came. There was a great scramb- 
ling out of the trenches and nullas. Then a halt, 



THE DISASTER 67 

another advance, then a halt — a wait for some- 
thing. It was not long in coming. It came in 
torrents, machine gun fire, rifle bullets and shells. 
There seemed to be a million guns concealed some- 
where. Then the advance continued. The British 
artillery was now making itself felt. Over toward 
the right a mound in Turkish territory was get- 
ting a few of the shells. It churned up like a 
stream under a waterfall. The whole line was 
nearing the Turks' first line of trenches. One 
after another, the units reached the fire trench and 
the Turks who got out found themselves cut off 
by a rain of shells. In some places they had fired 
all they thought best, nor did they run. They 
were just *^not having any.'' They stood in their 
trenches waiting to be taken prisoners though 
strenuously opposed to getting out. That might 
mean one of their own men's bullets in the back. 
They were soon out, however, and under guard, 
minus their rifles. Then it was up and over for 
the second line. Some had not stopped at all at 
the first line and were halfway to the second. The 
Turks were covering the ^^ getaway" to the second 
line by an army of snipers who kept a rain of bul- 



68 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

lets whizzing over the ground toward the relin- 
quished trench. Flat on the ground Tommy and 
Sepoy rained bullets back. Then the screen of 
snipers broke for the distant trench. Up and 
after the second trench went the British. It was 
great. Two miles to the second line seemed noth- 
ing at all. A few of the troops got all the way. 
The second line was being taken. Then a halt. 
Back to a part of the first line. Now there was 
disorder, Tommies, Ghurkas, Sikhs all in together 
firing frantically over the top of the trench. The 
mules were almost all killed. Ammunition had to 
be brought on men's shoulders. It was getting 
low, besides. 

A big Sikh, with his long black beard and side 
whiskers twisted up and tucked under his turban, 
was putting in his last charge. His eyes were 
blazing with excitement. He would make the last 
one count. He looked over the top and watched 
for a target for his last bit of lead. * * Duck, you 
blinMn' idiot," shouted a Tommy next to him — 
but he might have spoken Yiddish for all the good 
his cockney English did the Sikh. Bang ! went his 
rifle. Almost the same instant he slid down in a 



THE DISASTER 69 

heap. He had looked too long. He was killed 
outright, so there was nothing to be done but leave 
him. The wounded were being taken to a deep 
trench of the captured first line. The troops were 
coming back from the Turks to the first line again. 
Orders came for all wounded who could walk to 
*^get out of it." Things looked bad. Now more 
of the force was back in the captured first-line 
trenches. It was a check. 

Night came and all the wounded that could find 
room in the iron Army Transport carts were going 
back to the river. Next day there was a fierce 
counter attack by the Turks. They wanted to get 
back to their first line again. The wounded who 
were still in the trenches were placed in a deep 
trench to wait for carts to take them away. All 
during the next day the firing grew more intense. 
The Turks came nearer. The shells and bullets 
were raining all around the trench where the 
wounded were bundled together. A shell there 
would inflict awful execution. 

Even in the midst of the rain of bullets some 
of the wounded started on the long painful hike 
to the river, twelve miles away, rather than stay 



70 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

in that hole. There was danger now of a flank 
attack by the Turks, but the good old British cav- 
alry was too much for that. Into the night the 
firing continued. Finally it died down. The at- 
tack was beaten off. There was a sigh of relief, 
especially from the trench where the wounded 
were still lying, huddled together in all sorts of 
cramped positions 

It was the first chance to breathe a deep breath 
in peace since they had been put in there. Some 
of the finer spirits saw a bright side to the pre- 
dicament. ^'I hain't moved f 'r a 'ole day. Mebbe 
I won't know 'ow when I get a chance," said one 
who was sitting with his knees tucked under his 
chin and a big bandage around his chest. An- 
other, recognizing a pal not far away, called out, 
^^Eh ! Bert, next time you fall asleep in here, don't 
snore so loud. Ye might draw a shell your way." 
However the wounds may have hurt, there was 
never a murmur as the men waited for the carts 
to come to take them to the river and then to com- 
fort. 

Next day brought another attack, but not so 
ferocious. During the day most of the wounded 



THE DISASTER 71 

got away to the boats on the river. It was a queer- 
looking march, the wounded struggling over the 
twelve miles to the river. There were iron carts 
for the more serious cases and in each cart were 
one stretcher case and two or three sitting cases. 
The carts jounced along over the rough ground, 
hitting the wounded together, throwing some out 
to have to crawl the rest of the way themselves. 
Once in a while the carts had to cross nullas or 
dip a wheel in a shell hole, and the occupants 
would stiffen and grit their teeth as they were 
jostled together, their wounds getting blows and 
being pressed. The Indian Drabbles drove as 
carefully as they could, but with bullets whizzing 
around, horses and mules being shot, and the 
ground as irregular as a newly plowed field, it was 
hard to make the travel easy in these improvised 
hospital carts. Bare iron or even iron with a 
layer of straw offers little spring. In some of the 
carts, as a last resort, they used for mattresses 
the bodies of men that had been killed. 

At last, for most, the journey was at an end. 
There at the river were several river boats and 
barges. They were going down the river all the 



72 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

time, taking what wounded they could hold. But 
there were not nearly enough for the crowds of 
wounded and prisoners to go comfortably. And 
they were getting away only just in time. Next 
day the force had to retreat. The Turks, re- 
enforced from Bagdad, were getting around to 
the right. There was nothing for it but to fall 
back. The dash for Bagdad was over. All the 
hopes of a victorious force were shattered. The 
retreat was started. Bagdad must remain a mud 
town of a Turkish Pasha. 

The hope of trying again was by no means given 
up, but just then the one necessity was to get away 
from the Turks. It was a great feat, that retreat. 
Fighting rearguard actions continually, the force 
had to move slowly enough to protect the flotilla 
of river boats which had to go around the long 
bends of the tortuous river. The river was low 
and the banks at the bends were veritable traps. 
Under the circumstances, getting aground on that 
river was much to be avoided. The armed tug 
Sumana came to a sharp turn to the right. The 
bow nosed round in mid-stream. The stem shot 
around like a top, with the swift current behind it, 



THE DISASTER 73 

toward the bank. ^^Full speed astern!^' came the 
order from the skipper to the engineer below. The 
pilot swung the wheel far to the port and the stern 
shot by the bank. *^ Missed it by a foot — good 
work, captain," shouted one of the wounded offi- 
cers who were being carried as emergency pas- 
sengers on the tug. The stern churned up a boil- 
ing, surging eddy of muddy water as it passed 
the bank and the next minute the incident was for- 
gotten in the anxiety over the next turn in the 
river. 

Down at Kut the medical officers and staffs were 
straining every nerve in their efforts to get ac- 
commodations ready for the large number of 
wounded that were on their way down. Word 
came down the river that 3,000 were on the way. 
In Kut there was accommodation for about a quar- 
ter of that number. But perhaps the number was a 
mistake. They began to come in and there was a 
continual struggle to land the boats, carry off the 
wounded, house them and feed them. The pris- 
oners were coming down too, and they had to be 
taken care of. Then came at once two terrible 
reports. One was that everything that would not 



74 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

help in a siege should be sent out of Kut, the 
other that there was a break in the line of com- 
munications to the south and danger of an 
Arab attack on Kut. That seemed the last straw. 
Already everyone was working overtime on the 
business of taking care of the wounded. Now 
everyone that could possibly carry a gun must 
get out and be ready for an attack. Many of the 
active units were helping with the convoys of 
wounded. Now they must be ready to defend the 
town. The wounded were again packed on boats 
and started down the river. They had a disheart- 
ening voyage. When they were a dozen miles 
from Kut the boats stopped. Someone had seen 
a hostile band of Arabs around the bend. There 
they were, sure enough, entrenched near the bank, 
like so many Turks. Having no means of fighting 
the Arabs, the boats returned to Kut. The next 
trip the boats were accompanied by an escort, a 
gun boat and some infantry. On the decks of the 
convoy were embankments of kit bags, blankets, 
boxes and anything else that could be found to 
protect from bullets the wounded lying on the 
decks. 



THE DISASTER 75 

This time the boats got through. The wounded 
were safe, but still crowded together and uncom- 
fortable on the decks of the boats and barges. At 
Amara something happened which made all the 
difference. The Y. M. C. A. was started now 
along the Tigris and some of its members at 
Amara came aboard the boats with hot mutton- 
head soup, warm comforts, and fags. *^By gum! 
— that's the spirit,'' was the unanimous approval 
of the wounded men. The secretaries received 
more ^^ Thank you's" from those men than they 
had ever had before. 

With the escort gone the danger of Arab attack 
on Kut was now all the greater. There seemed 
to be nobody left to defend the place. The re- 
treating force was coming nearer the town in 
which it would stand. The monitors Comet and 
Firefly ran aground and had to be left. The trans- 
fer of crews had to be done under fire. Skipper 

E of the Firefly stood on the bridge doing 

everything possible to get the boat off the mud. 
Bullets whizzed all around him; one copped him 
in the arm. The boat still stuck and had to be 
left to the Turks. On down the river the force 



76 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

continued, the rear guard halting now and then to 
dig in and beat back an attack by an advanced 
Turkish force. 

The Turks made a last desperate attack on the 
first day of December. A large part of the force 
caught up with General Townshend's rear guard. 
The attack was too strong for a little guard to 
handle, and nearly all Townshend's army had to 
right about and beat them back. But this was the 
last attack. The Turks were **all in'' and could 
go no farther. That day the last of the wounded 
had to be got out of the town of Kut. Packed so 
closely they could not move, on any kind of boat 
that could be found, they went down the river. 

Two days later General Townshend and his 
force reached the fateful town. The cavalry and 
whatever else could be of more use below went 
down stream. Preparations were made to hold 
the town until a relief force could be sent up the 
river, and then — well, Bagdad was not forgotten. 
A thing worth starting is worth finishing. It 
was not the time to ask whether it were worth 
starting. It had been started. It was now the 
duty of the force to finish it. 



THE DISASTER 77 

By the seventh of December the Turks were 
surrounding the town of Kut and the investment 
began. Next day a message came across the lines 
that Nur-ed-din called on Townshend to surren- 
der. Some shells served as a refusal. The Turks 
returned the message with more shells. Enraged 
at the audacity of Townshend in settling in the 
town the Turks bombarded furiously for the next 
few days. On the twelfth, not satisfied with bom- 
barding, they attempted to take the place by storm. 
They must have lost over a thousand in the attack. 
Still Townshend held on, and would hold on till 
relief came. Christmas came and another attack 
from the Turks. All Christmas morning the 
troops on the front north of the city were beating 
the Turks out of a bastion they had stormed the 
night before. By the time the new year came the 
Turks were convinced that Townshend was in Kut 
to stay. Indeed he was. And his men were all 
behind him whatever might happen. 

Before long word came that the relieving force 
was on its way and that it was meeting with 
marked success. ^^The relief force attacked the 
Turks at Sheikh Saad, fifty miles east of Kut, and 



78 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

drove them back after a very stubborn fight under 
bad conditions of weather. Sir Percy Lake is now 
in command of the relief force. General Nixon 
has relinquished command on account of ill 
health." So read some scribbling on a sheet of 
paper stuck up on the door of one of the billets. 

The relief force was not the only force to feel 
the effects of mud. Kut was a veritable quagmire. 
Things were beginning to go badly. The rations 
were getting low. There were a number of sick 
in with the wounded in the hospital. Worst of all, 
the hospital seemed to be in a most exposed posi- 
tion for the Turkish shells to hit. Still it rained, 
still the river rose, still the rations decreased, still 
the wood of the houses went for firewood, still the 
guns of the relief force were far, far away — ^but 
still there was hope of Bagdad. *^ Bagdad for 
Christmas'' was a thing of the past. But ^^ Bag- 
dad when relieved'' took its place. Time, how- 
ever, wore even this down to nothing and all that 
anyone dreamed of was relief, perhaps to be sent 
down the river. 

During January, rations went down to half and 
there was talk of eating horses and mules. Yet 



THE DISASTER 79 

the spirit of the force stayed high. '*I am abso- 
lutely calm and confident as to the result. . . . 
We will succeed — ^mark my words ! — but save your 
ammunition as if it were gold,'' said General 
Townshend in a communique to all troops on Jan- 
uary 26. February failed to bring relief. March 
came. On March 10 another communique from 
General Townshend said, *'In order then to hold 
out, I am killing a large number of horses so as to 
reduce the quantity of grain eaten every day, and 
I have had to reduce your ration. ' ' And to think 
that once they had been nearly to Bagdad, the 
center of the food supply of Mesopotamia ! 

The relieving force was not concerned about 
Bagdad. In the awful conditions of fighting in 
mud that was so slippery one could hardly walk, 
in floods that filled up the trenches and made life, 
not to speak of fighting, well-nigh impossible, the 
hope of getting to Kut seemed about as far away 
as that of getting to Bagdad. Every mishap that 
could come from nature came to that relief force. 
Rain would have been bad enough, but mud and 
then the river in flood were too much for any force 
to fight through. 



80 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Yet slowly plowing through the mud the force 
got to within a few miles of Kut. In the evening 
the flashes of Townshend's guns might be easily 
seen. There was more hope. **We'll get to 
them/' was the feeling. But time was passing 
rapidly and starvation waits for no man. 

The indifference about Bagdad had now 
changed to fear. Suppose they should all be pris- 
oners of war? That might mean Bagdad, or 
Mosul, or some lonely mountain stronghold in the 
Taurus mountains, away up in Asia Minor. That 
would be no place for a white man. Eations were 
getting very low. There was almost nothing — 
no sugar, no milk, no vegetables, no eggs, no but- 
ter. The hospital patients fared little better — 
perhaps a little milk and a few beans. For the 
rest a few dates, a little jam, some horse meat or 
mule meat and Arab bread. This was the issue. 
Take it or leave it. There was nothing else. In- 
dians would crawl into their blankets for the night 
but never wake up. The nourishment was not 
enough to keep them going in their sleep. The 
roofs of all the buildings had gone for firewood 
and now the wood was scarce. It seemed only a 



THE DISASTER 81 

matter of days. The airplanes were doing their 
best to drop * * eats ' ' but it was impossible to sup- 
ply the demand. 

Spring weather was setting in and the town was 
more livable. There was hope in the clear air. 
One night there came a rumor which set the whole 
garrison in a blaze of excitement. The paddle 
boat, Julnar, was running the blockade with food. 
All night long the garrison listened for the chug 
of an engine, or the whisper of a hopeful rumor. 
Could it succeed? Would it mean perhaps some 
good bread, or even just a taste of meat and vege- 
tables ? There was heavy firing from down stream. 
Then silence. That was a long, long night. At 
daybreak the story reached Kut. Down the 
stream by the Turkish fort at Margasis lay the lit- 
tle craft, aground, and its valiant commander 
lying on the bridge in a pool of his own blood. 

That was the end. Everyone knew it. Three 
more days of ''sticking \V' mingled with prepa- 
rations to get out, and the surrender was an ac- 
complished fact. One hundred and forty-three 
days the siege had lasted. It was a new record. 
Now it did mean Bagdad. But to go to Bagdad 



82 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

as prisoners of the Turks ! It was bitter. There 
was hope that the force might be paroled. The 
Turkish commander was in favor of it, so valiant 
had been the stand. But orders from Constan- 
tinople, or more likely from Berlin, said no. And 
no it was. 

A certain number of wounded were to be 
allowed to go to India in exchange for Turkish 
prisoners. I do not wonder the Turks did not care 
for the men they sent to India. I have seen the 
results of famine in India, but never have I seen 
such specimens of bone with a little skin over it as 
among those men. The Turkish medical officers 
were to decide who should go. It was an anxious 
time for the men under inspection. Bagdad had 
lost all its charms now. Even the worst sickness 
would be welcome if it could save one from going 
to that place as a prisoner. The officers looked 
over all the cases very carefully, taking tempera- 
tures, examining, deciding. 

Each man with a light case went through those 
minutes as though they were years. *^Busra" 
meant India, perhaps ^^ Blighty.'' *^ Bagdad'' 
meant — ^what might it mean to be taken care of 



THE DISASTER 83 

by Turks, with their ancient methods of living and 
sanitation, to be treated as a prisoner in the town 
the Turks were gloating over? The fate of one 
man, with an attack of fever, was being weighed 
in the balance. It was pitiful. But he would not 
look *^ pitiful" in the face of a conqueror. He 
would keep on the face of a fighter and like a man 
would ** stick" whatever might come rather than 
let a Turk conqueror see a sign of weakness. In- 
side he wanted to be taken for sick and ** pretty 
seedy," but still farther inside was that determi- 
nation to win, no matter what the consequences. 
He stared the officer right in the eye as he looked 
him over. He would be slave to no one. The 
decision came. It was ** Bagdad." The sick man 
never moved a muscle. Inside somewhere he had 
a queer feeling. There was victory for him be- 
yond ordinary victory. But when the officer 
passed on, his lip quivered a little and he lay look- 
ing sadly ahead, thinking very hard. 

A few days later some boats were bearing to 
their destination the British sick and wounded 
slated for ^* Bagdad." The Turks treated them 
well enough and the food certainly tasted good. 



84 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

The awful feeling of surrender was soon dimmed. 
Once in a while a Turkish medical officer stopped 
to talk to a Britisher, to congratulate him on the 
way the force stood the siege and to wish him a 
quick recovery. There was no use now in being 
disagreeable about it. The trouble was all over 
and one might as well be friendly with his new 
neighbors. 

Slowly the boats pushed past the scenes of the 
campaign of a few months before. Then came that 
old Arch of Ctesiphon and there were thoughts 
conjured up by that which beat anything its own 
history could have to tell. There were thoughts 
of the day of frantic fighting when the trenches 
in front of it changed hands — but changed hands 
twice. There were few remarks aloud. But the 
thoughts that filled the mind of everyone who 
watched the shore were thoughts of a victory al- 
most won, of a crown almost gained. There was 
a lump in the throat of many a Tommy as he went 
slowly by that desert scene. There was not a man 
that cared whether or not the boat went on to Bag- 
dad now. Bagdad had nothing in it for him. 

Slowly the boats approached. The palm groves 



THE DISASTEE 85 

in the distance showed where the fertile city 
region started. Around another bend and the 
minarets were in sight. Was that the city of the 
^^ Arabian Nights, '^ of glory, of grandeur, of 
riches? Nearer and nearer moved the boats and 
the buildings became distinguishable. It looked 
something like Amara— but no— Amara was Brit- 
ish. Here was the city of Bagdad, a city, not of 
Aladdin, not of Haroun-al-Raschid—si city, not the 
prize of English victory, just a city of the Turks. 



CHAPTER V 

WRITING A NEW PLAY— "ON TO BAGDAD" 

The curtain fell. A heartbroken world watched 
it go down and turned away, eyes dimmed with 
tears. Poor General Townshend! No. Brave 
General Townshend ! and brave the men that stuck 
T>y him to the end! It was through no fault of 
theirs that they had to surrender. Theirs was the 
cross, and they bore it without a word. It took 
courage, during those last days, to hold out and 
say, *'We will not surrender, *' when the relief 
force was failing and everything in the little be- 
sieged town was going badly. Only sheer will 
power could make General Townshend stick at it 
— ^but will power he had, not only over himself 
but over his men. 

There were Turkish regulars and Kurdish 
troops fighting around Kut, holding Townshend 
in and keeping the relief force out. Those troops 
that had to be there to fight for the masters of 

86 



A NEW PLAY 87" 

Turkey might have been doing a far more deadly 
work in another part of the world, helping in the 
attempt to get down through Palestine to the Suez. 
Canal, or fighting their way through Persia. Dur- 
ing the days of the battle against the relief force 
the Turks lost their city of Erzerum. It is im- 
possible to tell how great good may have come 
from the sacrifice of Townshend. 

Then, too, what might follow! Kitchener and 
the Nile Campaign followed the sacrifice of Gen- 
eral Gordon at Khartum. At the death of Gor- 
don, Khartum and nearly all the Nile became the 
province of the crazy Mahdi, but that black page 
in English history was wiped clean when Kitch- 
ener led his splendid Anglo-Egyptian army into 
the city of Khartum. Perhaps another Kitchener 
would come to Kut — and Bagdad. 

That was the problem for the *' producers'' in 
London. On the stage the curtain was down and 
the players were through. The first Mesopotamia 
show was at an end. But the producers at the 
War Office in London were not through by any 
means. They must find a new Kitchener to send 
out as hero of a new show, a drama with an ending^ 



88 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

as happy as the first had been sad. The tragedy 
had served a purpose but a comedy would serve a 
far greater. If the deserts made a good stage for 
tragedy they ought to make a good stage for com- 
edy. The drops at the back of the stage had made 
picturesque scenery, the rows of pahns, the grace- 
ful Arab boats, the crescent moon hanging jaunt- 
ily in the brilliant Eastern sky, the white build- 
ings, the odd people in their ancient dress. And 
there had been no Bagdad. "With the domes and 
palaces and palms of Bagdad added to the scen- 
ery, the stage would indeed be wonderful. 

With the British the protagonists, and the 
Turks the antagonists there were tremendous pos- 
sibilities for action gradually rising till the Turks 
should be rushed up the river to their sacred city 
as fast as the British had been rushed to Kut. 
It must be so! It must be soon! Send out a 
Kitchener hero and more men and equipment and 
above all cut out the mistakes — that was the task 
that lay before the producers, the War Office. 

**Cut out the mistakes.'' It echoed the old 
order from London that had been like the writing 
on the wall during the first campaign, **A safe 



A NEW PLAY 89 

game must be played in Mesopotamia/' Every- 
one felt it. Everyone showed he had had a part 
in making the mistakes. ^^A safe game must be 
played in Mesopotamia. '* It was like the ghost 
of Julius Caesar, like that apparition that comes 
to a man who has committed murder and takes 
him back to the scene. It brought post mortems. 
The ghost would out. In the deserted house of 
Mesopotamia the ghost began to prowl. ^*A safe 
game,'' it said, and disappeared to see whether 
anyone was conscience-stricken. Again, **A safe 
game.'' It seemed as though everybody felt re- 
sponsible for the mistakes. Everybody saw the 
bogey. The strain grew too great. With one ac- 
cord the cry came, ^^Who was to blame?" 

The Eoyal Commission that in August, 1916, 
began the inquiry into that question has now come, 
reported and gone. All connected with the affair 
have been found responsible *^ according to their 
relative and respective positions." Sir John 
Nixon was found most responsible because of his 
* ^ confident optimism. ' ' But everyone had a share 
in the bungle. The hero. General Townshend, 
who advised against the advance, alone stood 



90 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

above blame on that score. Townsbend bad tbe 
cboioe of obeying or getting out. He chose as a 
real soldier must. Some were found to blame for 
misstatements ; some knew things they did not tell. 
Some had used poor judgment. Some had been 
ambitious. Some had had fears and had been too 
reticent. Some had seen the chance to grasp at a 
possible straw and had grasped. Some had been 
just careless. Many had been overworked. 

But there was other work to be done beside in- 
quiring into the faults of the past. The important 
work now was to get along with the new show and 
forget the old. The ghost was only beginning to 
prowl with its '*cut out the mistakes'' when the 
producers and actors were getting ready for the 
new show. On the stage Sir Percy Lake was lay- 
ing a foundation for new operations, beginning 
with the base and reorganizing the entire situ- 
ation. The forces in the trenches to which they 
had advanced in the attempt to relieve Townshend 
remained where they were, advancing only a little 
along the south bank of the Tigris where the 
Turks withdrew to better positions while they 
sent more troops up into Persia and Asia Minor 



A NEW PLAY 91 

against the Russians. Smmner came and with it 
cruel suffering from heat for the dejected troops. 

The failure was too depressing, the breakdown 
too complete to be remedied on the field. The War 
Office had to do that. It was a Herculean task to 
reorganize Mesopotamia. But the War Office set 
about it with determination to make good — and 
above all to cut out the mistakes. In the new show 
there would be no hazy distribution of authority. 
There should be no advance without a well-formed 
plan of action and a well-defined objective. There 
should be no unworkable understanding between 
those who make policies and those who execute 
them. There should be no lack of supplies, no lack 
of reports, no overlooking of facts that ought to 
be taken into account, no hasty action based on 
overconfidence, no piling of new troubles on men 
already overworked, no — but things were moving. 
The producers were doing things and were be- 
ginning at the beginning. 

In July, hardly three months after Town- 
shend^s surrender in Kut, the London War Office 
formally assumed direction of the Mesopotamia 
show. The Mesopotamia Expeditionary Force, 



92 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

under orders from London, took the place of the 
Indian Expeditionary Force D. Inadequate trans- 
port had been the foundation of all the cruelty in 
the campaign. The transport service was put 
under the Directorate of Inland Water Transport, 
directly responsible to London. It had been im- 
possible, under the old system, to find boats suit- 
able for the peculiar conditions of the country. 
Now they would be made in England. With this 
step came the similar Directorate of Supply and 
Transport, of Ordnance, of Medical Services, of 
Port Administration, of Railways, of Conservancy 
Works, of Remount and Veterinary Services. 
Every step in the right direction saved British 
lives and made victory more certain. 

The new campaign was in the realm of inter- 
national politics. It should be run from London, 
not from India. Yet the Indian government de- 
serves great credit for its services during the first 
campaign. At the outbreak of the war India sent 
to the aid of the mother country for fighting over- 
seas 80,000 British troops and 200,000 Indian 
troops. She stripped herself almost bare for the 
sake of the Empire as a whole. Then commenced 



A NEW PLAY 93 

trouble in the interior of India where some 7,000 
agents in Gei^nan pay came to stir np strife 
among the Indians ; then more serious trouble on 
the Afghan frontier where the hostile tribes were 
influenced to raid the Indian border. Indeed, 
India had her hands full, but she responded man- 
fully to every demand. Even the Eajahs, the 
native princes who did not acknowledge the over- 
lordship of Great Britain, gave unsparingly of 
their riches and of their men. India was really 
in the war. India sacrificed for it. But she 
could not do everything — and Mesopotamia suf- 
fered. The minds of the Indian government were 
busy with other things. 

Now that the direction of the campaign in Meso- 
potamia was under the War Office in London, 
victory was assured. But the hero? The new 
campaign demanded a hero that could use the 
advantages resulting from central control, who 
would see to it that everything went right, who 
would never make a move imtil everything was 
ready and who could be relied on to continue to 
the end. It should be someone who knew the 



94 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

War Office end, as well as the service end of 
war. 

The news came to us in India that the Com- 
mander-in-Chief of the newly named Mesopotamia 
Expeditionary Force was Major-General Freder- 
ick Stanley Maude who was already in Mesopo- 
tamia with the Thirteenth Division. No one knew 
anything particularly stirring about him. He had 
had long service in the army but had not been in 
the limelight. We looked up his record and found 
that he had first served in the Soudan campaign, 
in 1885, in the vain attempt to rescue General Gor- 
don, besieged in Khartum. That sounded prom- 
ising. Here was a similar campaign to the one 
on the Nile. After the Soudan he had served in 
South Africa for three years, during which time 
he became a Major and won the D. S. 0. After 
four years of service in African campaigns, he 
would know how to conduct such a war as that in 
Mesopotamia. Then, too, he had served in the 
War Office for eight years, in various positions. 
He had served on three general staffs and in the 
Great War served with distinction in France as 
Brigadier-General in command of the Fourteenth 



A NEW PLAY 95 

Brigade, and in Gallipoli as Major-General in 
command of the Thirteenth Division. That divi- 
sion had then gone to Egypt and later to .Meso- 
potamia, where it now was. Certainly the record 
sounded as though Maude were the right man. 
Every requirement was met. He knew the "War 
Office and he knew war in the deserts. His steady 
advancement to more and more responsible posi- 
tions showed that whatever tasks he had to do he 
did well. That was exactly the combination need- 
ed in Mesopotamia. **Cut out the mistakes. Go 
slow but go sure. ' ' 

The atmosphere cleared. There was hope in 
the air. Among the troops in India, on their 
way to Mesopotamia, a spirit of faith in the fu- 
ture found its way into the general atmosphere. 
The men in London were in direct command. Eng- 
land would see that the new campaign was a great 
success — ^but it would be a serious business. The 
relief force had tried its best to take Kut and had 
failed. Townshend had surrendered. These two 
facts were clear. But Kut would fall ! The dogged 
nature of the British soldier came to the front. 

It came time to embark for Mesopotamia. As 



96 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

the B. I. steamer Egra left her mooring in Bombay 
harbor someone started the men on the song, 
^'Pack up your troubles in your old kit bag and 
smile, smile, smile.'' We were ready for any- 
thing. 

In the show in Mesopotamia, **0n to Bag- 
dad," I was a stage hand. My part, like that of 
the doctors and nurses, was the part of a helper. 
My duty was to be of all possible assistance to the 
fighting men. We all ran the same chances of 
succumbing to some of the germs of Mesopotamia 
and of being visited by airplane bombs and the 
like, both fighters and non-fighters, but these 
chances were small, and as I could not use a gun 
against the enemy my part was surely not that 
of an actor. The principal advantage in the posi- 
tion of a stage hand in any play, aside from the 
advantage of being able to help, is the opportunity 
to become intimate with the actors and their ways 
on the stage, as they go through their parts. My 
work as secretary of the Y. M. C. A. among the 
British troops in Mesopotamia gave me unlim- 
ited opportunity for this. 

After following the first campaign against Bag- 



A NEW PLAY 97 

dad we know something of the stage on which 
the new show is to be played. We know some- 
thing of the new hero who is to lead the cast. 
Now for the rest of the actors. First let ns 
look at the private soldier with his big sun hel- 
met, his short little blouse with its big buttons, 
his heavy boots and wound puttees, and the per- 
petual cigarette in the side of his mouth. Tom- 
mies are Tommies wherever you find them, in 
England, in India or in Mesopotamia. Thou- 
sands and thousands are put into a mold, where 
they are to become just parts of a great machine 
and to lose much of their own individuality. Most 
of the Tommies in Mesopotamia during the second 
show had seen considerable service and were pret- 
ty well molded. 

Tommy is always three things, doggedly brave, 
undemonstrative, sentimental. He thinks — very 
little. He can wait patiently for hours, 'days, 
weeks, months — so long as he has his cigarettes. 
He can work like a Trojan, rush into danger calm- 
ly, perform the most wonderful feats of bravery 
and never say anything about it. When orders 
come he obeys— unless he thinks what rights he 



98 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

has are trampled upon, and then he is as doggedly 
stubborn as he is against the enemy. 

He never quite comprehends things, never gets 
to the bottom of things, never reasons things out. 
I was among the Tommies during times when 
there were great victories and during times when 
there were bitter defeats. He was a calm winner; 
a good loser. Neither victory nor defeat seemed 
to quite sink through. I can not imagine a French 
soldier or an American being so undemonstrative 
about victory or defeat as Tommy. He knows 
he has **done his bit.'' That is all he cares. He 
is sort of a fatalist. *^If the bullet's got my 
name written on it, it's for me. Otherwise not," 
is his philosophy. When the Tommies left camp 
to go up to the front line and over the top they 
looked at it as though they were going to a test 
of courage. Courage was the one thing that count- 
ed. It is Tommy's religion, so far as he has any, 
though he does not think it through deep enough 
to bring God in by name. He does not want to 
go over the top. But if it must be, he will show 
that he has as much courage as a man can have. 
The wounded were the only ones that really 



A NEW PLAY 99 

thought. Going up and over Tommy did not think. 
He felt. Some Tommies went over the top kicking 
a football. 

Tommy does not value life as he knew it before 
the war. He is in war — not in life. To Tommy 
there is one high value, to do one's bit; one low 
value, to slack, or, in Tommy's language, to 
** swing the lead." There is a trust between man 
and man in the trenches that men who go into 
them feel for the first time. **He let me down" 
is the one great curse. Tommy feels, ^ 'We're all 
in it together. " So he hates * ' swank, " or * * side, ' ' 
putting on airs. How can anyone claim to be 
better than another in the trenches? Everybody 
is giving his life. 

The feeling that *'we're all in it together" has 
one drawback. It makes Tommy feel that every- 
thing is common property. ** Anything you can 
get is yours, no matter how you get it — so long 
as everyone has an equal chance," is the way he 
looks at it. 

Tommy is not happy in the trenches. He longs, 
to get back. When he does get away to civiliza- 
tion for a little while, he wants at first nothing 



100 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

but sleep. Then he wants excitement. He has 
been in the excitement of war up to his neck and 
his *^ blood is up.'^ He looks for more excite- 
ment, not for rest, and he finds it in one way or 
another. 

Tommy sees very little of the * * horrors of war. ' ^ 
People must stay at home and look at war from 
a distance to see those. In war for all he is 
worth, Tommy ceases to compare. He sees nothing 
horrible. It is war as a separate existence that 
Tommy sees. Wounds are part of it. His life 
at home is past. It is a dream. He will return 
to it again, he thinks, but it is something dif- 
ferent. It has to do with the ordinary world. 
War has not. Seeing so many wounded and dead, 
and always facing death himself, his feelings are 
numbed. He is not all brute, but he is not as he 
was at home. Some Arabs were to be hung near 
our camp and a man applied for the position of 
hangman. Later he told the story of the execu- 
tion. ''The rope did not kill the 'budoos,' *' he 
said, * ' so I stepped in and hit them over the head 
with a stick to finish them." At home he would 
have been shocked at the occurrence, but at home 



A NEW PLAY 101 

he would have thought in terms of peace. In Meso- 
potamia he thought in terms of war. Once only- 
does Tommy think of the horrors in war — ^when 
his chum is killed. He goes to death light-hearted 
himself, but when a chum **goes west'' — that is 
different. 

The Tommy of Mesopotamia always had a lit- 
tle kit bag full of trinkets he had picked up ; Arab 
bullets, or pieces of Turkish uniforms, or buttons 
— almost anything. Everywhere that he had a 
bunk he had a little bag or box full of keepsakes. 
One man in camp had his box stolen by an Arab. 
It was pathetic to see how downhearted he was 
at the loss. If it had been a leg he had lost he 
would not have minded. That would be just part 
of the game. But that little box represented every- 
thing that was his own personal property. Ev- 
erything else he had, including himself, was the 
property of the army. 

Tommy is always funniest in his ** grousing'' 
or grumbling. He grouses not because he has a 
grievance but from habit. If there is really some- 
thing to grumble about, if his battalion has been 
caught in a tight place and nearly wiped out, and 



102 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

he is severely wounded, lie says nothing, or very 
little. But if his tea is cold he grouses terribly. 
He grouses about the little things that he would 
grouse about at home. If he is billeted behind 
the lines and there is a little rain getting in, he 
grouses. If he is in the trenches waist-deep in 
water, he sees something funny in it. His grous- 
ing is sort of a relic of past breeding. Breeding 
does not get a chance to show itself when Tommy 
goes **up and over." A Tommy came along the 
trench one day and, holding his side, shouted, 
**Aw, I stopped a whole bloody shell myself.'' A 
comrade shouted back, *^Aw, shut your mouth. 
You'd think you'd stopped a whole bloody Jac^ 
Johnson." A Tommy was brought into a field 
dressing station. He was riddled through and 
through with machine-gun bullets. * * Say, mate, ' ' 
he said, '* write to me father that I look like the 
top side of a pepper box." 

There is a beautiful side about Tommy. I saw 
the bunks of thousands of Tommies in rest camps 
and in the trenches in Mesopotamia, and almost 
invariably there was tucked into the blankets or 
hanging alongside the bunk a little paper picture 



A NEW PLAY 103 

frame with pictures of his family, his wife, or his 
girl, or of a pretty landscape. A Tommy to whom 
I gave a piece of chocolate said he would rather 
have a taste of that than anything else in the 
world. It was just like his pictures. He was al- 
most brute in the relentless struggle of war. 
Then came something that had to do with the days 
when he lived out on ordinary earth. It had to 
do with something tender about him and it pulled 
him back to himself and gave him a new start. I 
was playing my violin at a concert just behind the 
lines one evening when a husky Tommy stepped 
up to the front and asked most respectfully, 
** Would you please play *The Rosary,' sir? The 
chaps want to hear it." 

Many of the characteristics of the private ap- 
pear among the other ranks in the British Army. 
They are tempered and altered, however, by the 
various degrees of responsibility. There is the 
lance corporal, with his one stripe, '* the private in 
disguise," or the man who was **a private with 
us only a minute ago," as many a private has 
characterized him. His rank is rather an appoint- 
ment than a promotion, given to see whether he 



104 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

can make good as a leader of men. Next there 
is the corporal, with another stripe. He has usu- 
ally won it by showing his ability as lance cor- 
poral. The corporal gets a big share of the mean 
work of the army. He has to make a lot of men 
do things they do not want to do, and the men do 
not forget that he is not very far removed from 
them. Then comes the ^* backbone of the army,^^ 
the sergeant. He has a good deal of the respon- 
sibility and has to carry it well. He is the all- 
important link between the officers and the pri- 
vates. The sergeant-major belongs to the great 
** middle class.'' He can help or can hinder any- 
thing that passes either way between officers and 
lower ranks. It is a unique subaltern who can 
get things done if he is not on good terms with 
the sergeant-major. Yet the rank has its disad- 
vantages. *^ Shove it on the sergeant-major," is 
the slogan of the officers. If no one knows just 
who should execute an order it goes to the office 
of the sergeant-major. His desk is the great 
dumping ground for every sort and description 
of order. The sergeant-major is the key that 
unlocks the door to action. He is usually a man 



A NEW PLAY 105 

of at least sixteen years' experience in the army 
and knows the game thoroughly, often better than 
his commanding officer. The first commissioned 
officer, the subaltern or second lieutenant, is the 
man in the most ticklish position, unless he has 
worked his way up from the ranks. If he is new 
and has men under him that know the game bet- 
ter than he, he soon realizes that they obey him 
without having confidence in him. From first lieu- 
tenant up, the officers are or may be commandants, 
and they differ only in the degrees of their re- 
sponsibilities and experience. 

In all the diversities of ranks and classes in the 
British Army there is one characteristic which 
stands out as a part of each and every one. That 
is the indomitable desire to ^^ carry on.'' No mat- 
ter what may be the obstacles, no matter what 
may be the discouragements, ** carry on!" 

And one quality stands out above all others in 
the British Army. That is the quality of iron 
discipline. Combined with bravery it is the foun- 
dation of the army's accomplishments all over 
the world. The iron discipline makes for uniform- 
ity. It attempts to eliminate the personal element 



106 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

where it does not help; but it does not attempt 
to eliminate it where it can help. The officers take 
an interest in the men. The men get to love their 
officers. The officer shows his interest by being 
calmly insistent that everything go right. The 
men show their love by having everything go right. 
It is part of the discipline. There is never a 
looseness about the distinction between ranks. 
The lance corporal, though he was **just a pri- 
vate with us a minute ago," is in a different world. 
A shabby salute from a man to an officer or an 
officer to a man is an unpardonable sin. 

But if the officers are strict with the men they 
are as strict with themselves. A captain in Meso- 
potamia was so cruelly strict with his men that 
he drew upon himself the hatred of nearly all 
while they were training at the base. There came 
the orders to go up and over the top. "When his 
company returned to quarters the captain had 
won for himself, through his gallantry and care 
for his men under fire, the love and admiration 
of every man in his command. 

The siege of Kut and the manner in which the 



A NEW PLAY 107 

troops stood behind General Townshend to the 
last is proof of the effect of British discipline. 
It is proof that discipline does not mean lack of 
love. It is proof that discipline means that men 
will do for one officer what they will do for an- 
other of the same rank, but it also means that the 
bond that makes the discipline what it is, is love 
between commander and commanded. In his com- 
muniques to his men while starvation was staring 
them in the face and while the relief force was 
failing and failing, Townshend said, * * I . . . now 
love my command with a depth of feeling I have 
never known in my life before. . . . With the help 
of all, heart and soul, to me together, we will make 
this defense to be remembered in history as a 
glorious one. ... I may truly say that no General 
I know of has been more loyally obeyed and served 
than I have been in command of the Sixth Divi- 
sion." That does not sound like mechanical dis- 
cipline. The men loved Townshend as he loved his 
command, yet there was no let-up in the discipline. 
If there had been, the force could not have lived 
one hundred and forty-three days in the besieged 



108 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

town as it did. At tlie end came surrender. Yes — 
but more than that. There came proof of the 
mettle of the British troops and of the effect of 
British discipline. 



CHAPTER VI 

THE NEW SHOW— ACT I— GETTING READY 

The transport Egra carried two thousand 
troops on the six-day trip from India to Mesopo- 
tamia, and a good deal of the time we had to 
spend below decks; but with concerts, tourna- 
ments, ^'singsongs*' and the like the trip was 
pleasant enough ; and we were on our way really to 
do something. That made all the difference. It 
was along in October, not quite two years after 
the entrance of the first transport of the British 
troops into the waters of Mesopotamia, that we 
arrived at the top of the Persian Gulf, facing the 
land of legend. We were * ^ there. ' ' We were not 
actually ashore, but we were aground, which was 
next to it. Every boat sticks on the bar near 
the mouth of the river which leads the Tigris and 
Euphrates to the Persian Gulf. The bar might 
be moved, but every time a boat goes over, or 
through it, the captain thinks he has plowed a 
sufficient channel for any boat. 

109 



110 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

It was hot and sticky, like a summer day in 
New York. The deck of the steamer seemed like 
a prison. The sun was terrifically hot. Our eyes 
were unused to it and it hurt. The boat was wrig- 
gling off the bar, slowly. It was **full speed 
ahead,'' then *^full speed astern,'' but still we 
stuck. It was not till the afternoon tide that by 
wriggling sideways and other ways we finally got 
off. We were free and entering a land of prom- 
ise. What it might promise we did not know, but 
anything seemed possible in such a country as 
Mesopotamia, with a British force bound for Bag- 
dad. 

Near the mouth of the river a fleet of native 
boats, ^^mahailas," was starting on a trading ex- 
pedition. Shades of Sindbad indeed ! Those great 
bulging sails might take their ancient hulls and 
the Arabian pilots to any magic shore. 

What a country to have war in! But there it 
was. We were passing the remains of the little 
mud fort at Fao, destroyed by the first British 
guns fired in Mesopotamia. It brought Towns- 
hend to our minds, and we became serious. Kut 
must be taken! 



GETTING READY 111 

We entered the muddy river, steaming between 
banks of swamp and thick, bushy palms massed 
along the river on both banks as far as we could 
see. No one spoke. It was not a time for talk- 
ing. Thoughts of war and of oriental peace were 
too confused. We studied the faces of the skippers 
of the native boats we passed. Little they knew 
or cared whether British or Turks were winning 
farther up the river. They had their business as 
usual and had never paid any taxes to the Turks. 
The little property that one of those Arab fam- 
ilies had was always with them. , Their boat was 
their all. On the bottom of the clumsy old barge 
was all that a family might need to get along 
with, a grinding mill for the women to work at, 
and a brick fireplace to cook the grain into cakes — 
cakes that would kill a white man who tried to 
digest them. A place to rest, a place to eat, a 
family; what more could a home have? Here 
were homes just as they had been for a thousand 
years. 

Night came, with its gorgeous evening sky. We 
slept on the steamer amid peaceful oriental scenes 
and people, on a river where Father Time is never 



112 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

heeded and where present and future blend into 
one. 

With the morning all the thoughts of peace, of 
quiet, of ease, conjured up with the night, fled 
before the light of a different scene. We were at 
Busra — ^but not Busra of Sindbad with its thou- 
sands of canals, thousands of boats and caravans, 
millions of date trees, its great mosques and pal- 
aces and colleges, sharing the glory of the great 
Bagdad of the ^ ^ Caliphate '* ; nor Busra of the 
Turks, but Busra, the great British war base. The 
river was full of transports of the army and gun- 
boats of the navy. The land, for miles, was a 
mass of camps, barracks, supply dumps and work- 
shops. It was war and nothing else. None of 
these things would have been here otherwise. It 
was a tremendous business, this war, and Busra 
was the warehouse and workshop. Here time was 
precious. There was no more of the attitude of 
the East. Immense bands of Indian and Egyp- 
tian laborers were working at top speed on roads, 
railways and wharves. Other bands were unload- 
ing stores from ocean boats, sweating up and 
down the gangplanks with their burdens and pil- 



GETTING EEADY 113 

ing them in great huge pyramids in the palms. 
Here and there a motor lorry or a Ford ambulance 
was sending up a cloud of dust as it tore over the 
desert, while, awaiting orders to get on with other 
work, hundreds more stood ready at the transport 
stations. Not a moment must be lost. Kut must 
be taken! The word was on everyone ^s lips. 
' ' What 's the word from up at Kut V '' There 's a 
rumor of beginning next month''; *^ Bagdad for 
Christmas this year!'' were some of the expres- 
sions of every day. The campaign to retake Kut 
was on in earnest. 

We were getting to the show in the middle of 
the first act. That act saw no fighting. It was 
perhaps still more interesting, if different from 
the rest. General Maude was tackling and seeing 
through iKe Herculean task of ** getting ready." 
He was ** cutting out the mistakes," the all-impor- 
tant dictum. Plainly, his task was this : to make 
out of the mud town of Busra, amid scenes of the 
life of the wandering Arabs, a great warehouse, a 
warehouse for every kind of implement of war, 
but especially of men — a place to receive, store, 



114 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BEITISH 

repair and ship men along with other implements 
of war. 

Here were the actors, thousands of them, on 
a stage so different from the like warehouses of 
England and Framce as to be overwhelming in its 
contrasts. The unimaginative soldiers of the 
British army were getting ready for the work to 
come by first getting used to the Arab people in 
whose land they were living, getting acclimated 
not only to the climate but to the ways of the 
Arab land. 

Busra had changed greatly since the day when 
the first British troops marched into it, two years 
before. The many flat-roofed Turkish buildings | 
were now converted into billets or offices of the 
British army. Where had stood soft couches for 
the idle Pasha now stood tables with typewriters 
going at newspaper-office speed. Where li^d been 
Turkish gardens now were piles of cut stone for 
roads, brought from overseas. There were also 
signs of German foresight in the days of peace. 
Materials for the Berlin-Bagdad Railway were 
piled as they had been left by the Teuton railway 
engineers, or were being used by the British. 



GETTING EEADY 115 

Eails marked **Made in Berlin/' with the ship- 
ping mark ^^Busra,'' were used, some as girders 
for a little bridge across a ditch, and others for 
the British light army railway. 

Throughout the town of Bnsra the star and 
crescent door-knockers and the Arabian coffee- 
shop signs had given place to signs of British of- 
fices of the army, G. H. Q., D. S. & T., D. 0. S., 
D. M. S., E. S. 0., D. L. of C, and many others of 
greater and of less importance. Electric wires fol- 
lowed the roads through the town. Even in the 
bazaars the needs of the British soldiers took 
precedence over those of the native population. 
The Turkish barracks were crowded with British 
troops, the small river and canal boats which 
served as taxis were taken almost entirely by 
English patrons. Most of the townspeople had 
left their ordinary merchant business and were 
working for the men in khaki. 

Beyond the town were the camps and dumps, 
hospital huts and wharves, animal inclosures and 
transport machines, new-made roads and land de- 
velopments. As the sun went down everything 
became again silent and motionless. The outlines 



116 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

of the cities of tents grew dimmer and dimmer 
against the lurid sky. 

The sentries were posted. We were stopped 
abruptly by one with *'Halt! who goes there?" 
** Friend," came the answer. *^Pass, friend; all 
is well," was the quick response. Some Scotch- 
men were passing the sentry with us. One of 
them, with characteristic pride in his Highland 
kilts, said to his mate, **Does he no ken hoo Fritz 
'ud look in kilts?" 

With the night returned the East, and as we 
lay in our tents the jackals' barks and the camels' 
grunts alone broke the stillness. 

The constant getting ready, getting ready, made 
brothers of us all. We were aU working for the 
same end, all the thousands of us in Busra, all 
ranks and all kinds. That made even camp life 
seem bright. As the days parsed we found that 
living in the land of the Arabs was not so bad 
after all. Mesopotamia was an ideal place for a 
big camp. There was plenty of space to spread 
out, in fact there was not very much but space. 
The aviators were m their element. The whole 
country, except for the palm groves, was an aero- 



GETTING EEADY 117 

drome. And we were so far away from civilization 
that we were not bothered by comparisons between 
our past and our present states. We were in a 
different world. 

Yet looking at it from a distance everything 
seems almost ludicrous. It is one thing to clear 
a part of a plain somewhere in America and build 
a camp for the new troops to be sent to France. 
It was another to set down a great base in the 
midst of date palms. Here we have lines and lines 
of railways and motor trucks to carry stores to 
the big camps. In Busra the lines were as likely 
to be camels as motor trucks. For the meat ra- 
tion in Busra we had no meat sent from a slaugh- 
ter house all ready to be cut up, but the flocks 
which an Arab shepherd, in his long robes, with 
his crook drove in to be killed in camp. For put- 
ting up new buildings there were no huge loads 
of lumber, but long lines of little donkeys carrying 
sacks of dirt to the spot. The dirt became mud, 
the mud became the outside of mud huts, plas- 
tered on reeds bound together for walls and roofs. 

And the people were so queer. To irrigate 
their fields two husky Arabs took a saucer-shaped 



118 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

basket of reeds and swung it with ropes between 
them as they stood knee-deep in the river. Each 
time the swing was toward the shore they picked 
up a little water and sprinkled it over the bank 
in the direction of a ditch. Irrigation began only 
after hours of this process. It never occurred 
to them to carry water in big vessels to the crops. 
That would take strength. Their method only 
took time. And what is time ? The boatmen trav- 
eled upstream in their homely boats, perfectly 
happy to sail instead of to pole, if there was 
only enough wind to enable them to hold their 
own against the current. The women often 
crossed the river on bundles of reeds, drifting 
a mile downstream before they finally got across. 
They were convinced that time made little dif- 
ference. The methods of two thousand years ago 
did well enough. The Arab farmers still plowed 
their fields with the simple implement of a crooked 
stick, cut their grain with crude sickles and 
trod it out with their horses or donkeys. Then 
there were the date pickers who filled baskets with 
dusty dates and stamped on them with their bare 
feet to pack them down. They piled the baskets 



GETTING READY 119 

together ready to be shipped to the West. In 
Busra we were forbidden to eat dates without 
washing them in the chemical purifying solution 
issued by the army, and we had eaten the same 
kind of dates at home without a thought! 

The slow way of doing things kept in style prin- 
cipally because there was no great competition. 
But the Arabs could do heavy work. I never saw 
such strength in men as those men had when it 
came to carrying heavy burdens on their backs. 
When there were no donkeys handy to carry their 
things, they loaded up their own backs and each 
man did the work of about three donkeys. 

The most curious episode ever, in this line, 
occurred when we had to move a piano from one 
part of a camp to another. It was an upright 
affair, not quite full size. Instead of calling up 
an express company, there being none, I sent one 
of the Indian servants out to get some Arabs. I 
heard him a minute after, not far from the tent, 
calling ^'Hamal! Hamal! Abu Hamal!'' In an- 
other minute there were four immense Arab 
coolies standing at the opening of the tent. I 
selected the biggest of them and planted him 



120 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

with Ms back to the back of the piano, as though 
he were a wooden soldier or a big doll. Then 
with all the Arabic I had been able to master and 
many words in Robinson Crusoe's sign language 
I explained that the big fellow should take the 
piano on his back and the others should steady 
it. He wanted to know where he was to go, but 
it would not do to let him know that. He might 
set a price. So with a little more sign language, 
accompanied by great flourishes of a big stick, the 
proceeding commenced. The hamal threw his 
long rope around the piano, and knotted it around 
his forehead, made a pad on his back with his long 
robe, and braced himself for the pull. He heaved 
it up with the help of the other hamals and stag- 
gered under the load. The muscles of his legs 
stuck out like great knobs of wood. The rope 
pressed deep into his forehead and his eyes fairly 
stuck out of his head. But he looked satisfied and 
started off, the three other Arabs balancing the 
weight and helping. 

He got about half way when he looked around 
for a place to set the piano down. No amount of 
persuasion or compulsion could make him go 



GETTING READY 121 

farther. He saw a carpenter's bench stnck in 
the ground not far off and made for that, backed 
up to it and rested most of the weight on that. 
'^La!'' he said, out of his throat, and gave his 
head a little tip backward, looking very stubborn. 
Encouragement had failed. I tried humor. * ' Oh, 
Abu!'' I said, reproachfully. At the word Ahu, 
**father," he looked up. I knew so little Arabic 
I thought it wise to learn some for his amuse- 
ment. I held up one finger. ** English — one; 
Hindoo — eJc; Arabi — ?" It hit the spot. He 
forgot to be stubborn and smiled. '^WahudT' 
he said, again out of his throat. I repeated it, 
but did not get it quite right. **La!" he said. 
I tried again. He smiled but let it pass. I held 
up two fingers, then three, learning the next two 
numbers ^'TJinien" and ^ ^ Khalatha/ ' That was 
enough for a little encouragement for the old 
man. I pointed to the hamals who were helping, 
and with signs theoretically placed one upon the 
other. When we had the imaginary three-man- 
high hamal 1 told the Abu, '^Khalatha hamal — 
wahud Ahu/' It hit the old man's funny bone. 
He laughed outright. Making use of the effect of 



122 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

the langli we started off again and the new lease 
on life lasted till we reached the other end of the 
camp, where the Arabs were well paid. They 
went off chuckling, probably at my attempt to 
speak Arabic. 

The mud town of Busra was full of Arabs, but 
they were of the type that have become weary 
of the wandering, exciting life over the plains, 
and have settled down to the life of the town, 
where stealing is more gentlemanly but just as 
rife. For the Arabs of story, the Arabs who 
do things, who rob, plunder, wander and fight, 
are the Arabs of the villages, far from the towns, 
villages which the dwellers can pick up at a mo- 
ment's notice and pitch in another part of the 
desert. It is easy enough to see why the Arabs 
can move so readily. Their household goods con- 
sist of a grinding mill and a few pitchers and 
bowls. Their houses, unless they have built for 
themselves a mud village, are just great strips of 
canvas and skins stretched over poles, or bundles 
of reeds tied together. Their wardrobe would 
hardly fill an envelope. Never soiling their feet 
with shoes; not wearing any sort of hat but a 



GETTING READY 123 

large handkerchief kept on the head by a coil of 
wool like a snake, their clothing is most simple. 
The men have jnst two garments, a long robe 
girdled at the waist, and a coarse, dark mantle 
over that, hanging from the shoulders. 

One evening, while walking from one camp to 
another along the river bank, I lost my way and 
wandered into a village of these people. The men, 
all big-boned, dark-skinned fellows, were sitting 
smoking or were roaming around with that f ar-oif 
look peculiar to wanderers in the desert. While I 
was there an old man — ^he looked like Methuselah 
— came to the village carrying a sheep. He had 
slung the animal over his shoulders, holding its 
fore feet in one hand and its hind feet in the 
other, with the woolly body around his neck. The 
old man's long gray beard and the sheep seemed 
to blend together. The women, much smaller 
than the men, with worn, wrinkled faces, were 
nearly all dressed in long black robes. Most of 
the women were tattooed or had little green fig- 
ures painted on their cheeks near their eyes. They 
were grinding at the mills or nursing dirty little 
babies. The kiddies were playing and laughing 



124 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

along the bank of the river, where lay the clumsy 
boats of the Arab family. At the shore there 
were also women and girls drawing water in 
long-necked copper vessels and carrying it to the 
tents and huts. I thought of Eebecca at the well. 
Some, girls of perhaps twenty-two years, who had 
kept even to that age traces of beauty, were more 
brilliantly dressed than the women in black. Per- 
haps they were favorites of the head man of the 
family. Over the ordinary loose-hanging shape- 
less robe they were bedecked with thin scarfs 
lightly draped around the shoulders or waist. One 
girl, with a flowing robe, wore scarfs of orange 
which set off beautifully her rich black Arabian 
eyes. As she walked up from the bank with her 
pitcher on her shoulder, the heavy bracelets she 
wore on her bare legs and arms glistened in the 
glow of the evening sun. 

A small dome of mud in the center of the vil- 
lage was the only sign of the religious observ- 
ances of the Mohammedan tribespeople. An old 
man kneeling on the bank was prostrating himself 
in prayer to Allah, with his face to the western 
sky and the holy Mecca. Still dressed as the 



GETTING EEADY 125 

prophet Mohammed dressed, the man of Arabia 
was praying toward the Arabian Mecca. Turkish 
government had not changed the direction to Con- 
stantinople. 

The holy place of most of the Arabs of Meso- 
potamia is the little town of Kerbela on the river 
Euphrates, rather than Mecca of Arabia. It is 
the spot where the Shiah martyrs were killed, 
and where the Shiahs still look for inspiration. 

One morning in early November I chanced to 
be in the town part of Busra when I noticed that 
there was something unusual in the air. There 
were none of the throngs of coolies around, many 
of the bazaars were closed, and in side streets 
were groups of women huddled together on the 
ground in their black robes, with dust and ashes 
on their heads, weeping as though their hearts 
would break. I walked to the canal to get a boat 
and found there were no boatmen working. Near 
the bridge I saw a woman carrying a child in one 
arm and with her free arm waving a sword over 
the head of the child. Every once in a while she 
took a little jab at the child's head till it was 
covered with cuts. That certainly pointed to 



126 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

something important in the minds of the Arabs. 

The celebration to which all these signs pointed 
was not long in coming. I was on the bridge which 
crosses the creek when I heard the faint sound 
of distant shouting, like the echoes of a tre- 
mendous crowd. Then there came dim, metallic 
noises, like armor clashing against armor, then 
a drum, and a horn. A crowd of townspeople, 
Arabs, Chaldeans, Jews, Sabeans and Persians, 
were forming a line along the wall at the side of 
the road. Before we knew it a number of us in 
khaki were part of the throng, waiting for the 
parade. 

We were facing the creek running along beside 
the road. The noise grew louder and louder. In 
another moment black banners hanging from long 
lances were moving along over the heads of the 
crowd across the creek. Now they had reached 
the bridge. They were crossing, now, and moving 
up past us. The crazy din of cymbals, drums and 
horns was almost deafening. First came the 
black banners, then curiously decorated floats. 
On one of the floats was a bier, on another what 
looked like a man's head in a tin pan. Splen- 



GETTING READY 127 

didly dressed horsemen on fine Arab horses with 
all their trappings followed these. Some held 
long cnrved swords and one would judge from the 
wildness of their eyes that they expected to do 
something murderous with them. Then came more 
banners and persons in rich costumes. Then the 
rabble on foot; all men, bared to the waist and 
shouting wildly. They stopped now and then and 
beat their chests with all their might, keeping 
time with a leader and shouting ^*A-li! A-li! 
Hu-sein! Hu-sein!'' as they struck their chests. 
A big man who stopped in front of us had beaten 
his chest to shreds. A Tommy, nearby, said, 
*^The trenches are safer.'' 

When the men beat themselves, the groups of 
women wept all the louder to try to be heard 
above the tumult of shouting. They set them- 
selves so seriously to the weeping that it became 
almost a shout, as though they were cheering. 

It seemed like a dream after a lesson in the 
Old Testament about sackcloth and ashes — ^but 
no; here were more; a long line of men holding 
hands. They were dressed in white robes covered 
with streaks that looked like red paint. But as 



128 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

they came nearer, the truth appeared. Each man 
had a square shaved in the middle of the top of his 
head and a deep cross cut in it. The cut might 
be fatal — but it would show his pity and love for 
the blood of those that had died as martyrs. They 
passed by us slowly, some staggering in their 
weakness and holding themselves up by the help 
of their fellows. **That chap looks like he'd 
copped a bit of a shell. They must do some 
straffin'. I'd rather the straffin' of the Turks," 
said someone in the crowd. 

The parade passed by and I went my way up 
through the bazaar quarter of the town. For the 
first time I could detect some expression in the 
iron faces of the Arab shopkeepers. The talking 
in the coffee shops, where the men were sitting 
on the wide wooden benches smoking their hubble- 
bubble pipes, was louder and more excited than 
usual. 

I inquired of a friend with experience in Arabs 
what this celebration was all about, and learned 
that these paraders were men of the Shiah sect 
of Mohammedanism, bemoaning the martyrdom 
of the men whose names they called out — Ali and 



GETTING READY 129 

liis son Husein. This was the Passion celebration. 

Ali was cousin and son-in-law of the prophet 
Mohammed. When Mohammed died, Ali, unfor- 
tunately, was not chosen successor to him as head 
of Islam. In gentlemanly spirit he conceded the 
election of the chosen one. But his followers were 
many and fanatical. After the third successor to 
Mohammed had proved himself unworthy of the 
post, Ali was made caliph under the pressure of 
his followers. All's claim had been thrice denied, 
even though he was connected by blood relation- 
ship to Mohammed. Now his wild, terrible party 
got him into power. He tried to rule from the 
banks of the Euphrates but his attempt was a 
failure. In the frenzy which followed, Ali was 
murdered in Kerbela and the sect opposed to him 
came into power. 

But by the murder of Ali his followers were 
roused to still greater heights of fanaticism. The 
blood of the prophet had been shed. They put for- 
ward Husein, the second son of Ali, as the rightful 
caliph. They were ready, almost anxious, to die 
to retrieve the awful murder of Ali. A gruesome 
struggle ensued and Husein also was killed. Those 



130 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

deaths have never been forgotten. Half of Islam 
still regard All and Husein as their great fore- 
fathers and celebrate the shedding of the 
Prophet's blood through Ali and Husein by shed- 
ding their own. 

It is as real to them now as ever. It is said 
that each year 100,000 Arabs take their dead to 
be buried in the holy ground where Ali and Hu- 
sein fell. 

These are the people ; this the sort of life that 
we were in the midst of in the great warehouse 
of men among the palms of the great ''date 
town. ' ' But though the people stay the same from 
generation to generation, the war was going on. 
Under the strong hand of General Maude every- 
thing was ready. General Maude had ''cut out 
the mistakes. ' ' Kut would be taken. Every day 
we expected to hear reports that an advance was 
being made. 

My work took me up the Tigris, nearer the 
front, to the biggest hospital camp of the force, 
in the town of Amara. Men were coming and 
going every day between our station and the 
front. A few came back with slight wounds from 



GETTING EEADY 131 

an airplane raid. Then all was quiet. Every day 
brought the rumor that there would be an attack 
the next day. 

We could see the results of the work of Gen- 
eral Maude. We could see the tremendous re- 
enforcements getting into positions to be used. 
We could see the piles of supplies, the railways, 
the transport facilities, a hundred boats where 
there had been a dozen, a hundred automobiles 
where there had been one. We could see all man- 
ner of machines and factories, ready to repair 
equipment and guns, to make ice and furnish elec- 
tric current. We could see splendidly equipped 
hospitals where there had been a system that ab- 
j solutely broke down under the strain of the first 
I campaign. But most important of all, we could 
I see a good spirit in the place of the dejected atti- 
tude that followed the failure to relieve Town- 
shend. Each and every improvement was to have 
its share, large or small, in the great drive that 
must be successful because everything was ready.. 



CHAPTER VII 
A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT— ACT II 

General Maudb was at the front now. The 
first act in Busra was over. The course to be run 
by his troops was the same which the troops under 
General Townshend ran in the stirring fight for 
Kut which brought Townshend his prize. Town- 
shend gained Kut after two days of fighting at 
breakneck speed. But now there were new ob- 
stacles in the course. 

Townshend had found a small force of Turks 
on both banks of the Tigris south of Kut. He had 
drawn nearly aU the force to the south bank and 
then delivered his crashing blow on the north. 

Maude found a larger force of Turks in much 
stronger positions, with a knowledge that they 
had kept back the British for many months and 
that Townshend 's surrender in Kut was due to 
their holding back the relief force. They were 
confident, reenforoed and in fighting mood. And, 

132 



A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT 133 

besides, the powers in Germany were taking a 
more personal interest in the Mesopotamia cam- 
paign. The war was indeed in the hands of Turkey 
as far as the suffering went, but standing above the 
Turks were German officers in Bagdad. General 
Maude could not carry off his prize with a dashing 
attack. For him there must be a campaign. 

The blow of General Maude must be a premedi- 
tated, painstaking sort of fight, like the campaign 
of Kitchener in Egypt. Lord Kitchener demanded 
above all other things that as his troops marched 
up the Nile they should never march beyond rail- 
head. His troops must wait for the railway no 
matter how long it might take. With him there 
would be no force cut off, no force without pro- 
visions, no force without all necessary transport. 
Moving toward Khartum slowly, steadily, surely, 
Kitchener had in his mind the picture of the 
heroic Gordon in his last days in Khartum where 
by his own magnetism of character he held the 
people of the city firm to him to the end, and fi- 
nally gave himself for the sake of the honor of his 
country. When everything was ready, Kitch- 



134 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

ener's force moved like clockwork, but not be- 
fore. 

General Maude's campaign should move in the 
same way. He, too, saw the picture of a hero 
beating back the Turks from Kut and fighting 
starvation within the town. Like clockwork — ^the 
wheels turning steadily, the pendulum swinging 
without a hitch, always moving ahead, moving 
ahead, striking, and striking surely at the right 
time — so would move the British toward Kut. 

In the interior of Persia there was still unrest. 
In the interior of Arabia the Turks were active 
and hoped to get around behind the British on the 
Tigris and Euphrates. On the Tigris the Turks 
were in the same positions that they held when 
General Maude took command of the British 
force. The object of the Turks was to hold back 
the campaign of General Maude with as few 
troops as possible and leave the bulk of the Turk- 
ish army to operate in Palestine and in Persia. 
That would allow the repulse of the Russians 
from the Persian hills and the check of the Brit- 
ish on the advance toward Jerusalem. If Maude 
should be successful on the Tigris both these other 



1 


7 
^ 


•0 








1 




s> 


^ 


\^ 




^ 
«» 




J? 




S; 


\ 


^ 




J 




1 




^ 


i 


1 — ^ 


J 


■J 




o 




\; 








^ 




. 






1 1 


'—n-fti^ 











1 


ii 


; 1 


I 


« 




«$ 




si 




.' %L 


c 


j; 


6 




1 

i 


'^/ 




^ 
^ 


i^^ 


1 


1- 

O 




o 

1 


;1 


^ '/' 




^^ 




'X 


< 


r • <• 


* * 






< 


^1 






iIn 










v= 


^ § 




,ll X 










1^ 


u ^^ 




|;|i; 










^.%^i B 




r*' 

1 '»' 


t 






1 

/ 









135 



136 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

campaigns against the Turks might be successful. 
That would not be, however. Maude could not 
break through Sanniyat. So reasoned the Turks. 

It was on Sanniyat that the Turks pinned their 
hope. And they had reason. Wedged in between 
the Tigris and an impassable marsh, only a thou- 
sand yards apart, the Sanniyat position was as 
strong as any position might be. It was safe from 
anything like a flank attack. Also it was too nar- 
row a position to allow feinting in one sector and 
attacking in another at a great distance away, as 
is often done. The Turks had spared no labor in 
building the trenches. Everything was there, con- 
cealed machine-gun pits, elaborate parapets, 
barbed-wire entanglements, military pits, land 
mines. The communication trenches formed a 
veritable city of streets. Each street running 
perpendicular to the river had its opening on the 
bank and its own system for pumping water. And 
the No Man's Land before the position was as flat 
and as open as a frozen lake. 

The rumors were the same every day. **We'll 
be up and over to-morrow." So intent were we 
on what we expected that the start was made be- 



A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT 137 

fore we knew what was happening. * * We're bom- 
barding at Sanniyat ! ' ' came the excited word. It 
was the ^^GoT' The campaign was on. It was 
startling! Everybody had thought that the San- 
niyat position could not be taken by a frontal 
attack unless we could in some way get around 
behind it too. But we had hardly begun to won- 
der about it when fresh news came in. * * The cav- 
alry have got across the Hai." Another shock! 
With all our thinking we had not expected that 
right away. But neither had the Turks. 

With everyone '*set/' at the word '^Go'' the 
cavalry, with supporting infantry, moved out in 
the small hours of the fourteenth of December. 
It was a year, almost to the day, after the time 
when Townshend, besieged in Kut, started his 
great defense against the Turks. The bombard- 
ment at Sanniyat was but a dummy to take the 
attention and strain off the southern bank. The 
Hai river was off to the west, a little stream, 
once the main course of the Tigris, flowing due 
south from the town of Kut. Four miles down its 
course the British threw a bridge across the 
stream. There was little current and the river 



138 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

was not more than a hundred yards wide. The 
crossing was a complete surprise to the Turks 
and across the river only a band of Arab horse- 
men stood in the path of the British force. This 
band of Arabs was too surprised to offer strong 
resistance and after a few of them had been 
mowed down with machine-gun bullets the rest 
cleared out. 

So the little muddy stream was the British 
prize for winning the sprint. But this was not the 
whole race. The race for Kut was to be a Mara- 
thon. The first part of it was a decided victory 
for the Tommies. The soldiers of the Sultan were 
far behind, completely outclassed. 

At the south end of the Hai lay Nasarie, on 
the Euphrates, with the British force in much the 
same position that it held when the town was first 
taken early in the first campaign, soon after the 
celebrated ^^Townshend^s Regatta'' at Amara. 
That position was now all protected. With the 
British controlling the northern part of the Hai 
the Turks could send no troops or supplies down 
that river against Nasarie. It was a great blow, 
but the Turks were not dismayed. The infidels 




A bend in the long covered bazaar which runs through 
Bagdad 




Turkish river mines which failed to halt the British 
advance 



A NEW PLUNGE FOB KUT 139 

could be no match for the followers of Allah. 
Allah beat them when they tried to take Bagdad. 
Again Allah would coop them in a trap. 

Little they imagined what this first drive meant. 
It meant the forging of a great loose chain hang- 
ing from its ends, one on the Tigris at Magasis, 
the other now on the Hai; a chain which would 
tighten, tighten, tighten, till everything within its 
bend must perish or flee. 

The end of the chain on the Tigris was held 
firm. General Cobbe was in command from Mag- 
asis to Sanniyat. A picket line ran along the 
south of the Tigris from Magasis to the British 
position facing the Turks at Sanniyat. The new 
anchorage on the Hai was as firm. General Mar- 
shall, who commanded the charge for the Hai, was 
in command of that section of the British front. 

The Turks now took up a position against the 
British on the Hai not much more than a thou- 
sand yards south of Kut. The British facing 
north moved toward the Turks. Hliel Pasha be- 
gan, I imagine, to feel sorry he had lost the Hai. 
The British advanced in a formation that made 
the force extend for thousands of yards. Though 



140 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

the force was little more than a division, it ap- 
peared to be a tremendous army. The advance 
was slow, creeping np to get into touch with the 
Turks. But it was great to have an entirely new 
part of the country to march on and work over 
and dig in. The country below had become mo- 
notonous. 

The cavalry were in their element. They had 
been so tied down in the past months, with noth- 
ing very exciting to do, they just could not do 
enough now. Off shot a cavalry detachment past 
Kut and got near enough to the Tigris to threaten 
the Turkish river-boats bearing supplies from 
Bagdad to the army at Kut. They actually saw 
the boats steaming up the Tigris, taking the first 
Turkish wounded to Bagdad, and they resolved to 
follow them there before many days. 

It was not yet the time for a great advance on 
the river Hai. There the force must hold the end 
of the chain until the middle could move up to the 
Tigris. When that was done, and the Turks had 
either crossed the river or surrendered, the force 
on the Hai might advance toward Kut. In the 
meantime all that the force need do was keep the 



A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT 141 

Turks occupied. It stretched out the left of the 
line to the northwest and obtained a position look- 
ing into Kut from the side. The airplanes were 
busy, bombing and beating back parties of irregu- 
lars that attempted to raid the British camps. 
They hit the Turkish pontoon bridge and caused 
their engineers a great deal of bother as they 
towed it upstream. There was a good deal of 
artillery work on both sides and the British 
casualties were considerable. All the wounded 
were sent overland to the Tigris behind the Brit- 
ish lines and from there on paddle boats down 
the river to the hospital. 

On a cold, crisp day in December, one of the 
coldest days of the year, though still above freez- 
ing, a paddle boat brought a large batch of 
wounded to our dock. With their uniforms spat- 
tered with blood and rough field dressings on their 
wounds, they were brought into the hospital 
wards. These were only huts made of reeds and 
mud but they seemed like home to the men as 
they came off the boat. I went aboard the boat 
with what cigarettes and good cheer I could find, 
and as I went from man to man I noticed that a 



142 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

great many were youngsters. They had prob- 
ably gone over the top for the first time. One of 
them was sitting on his stretcher looking as 
though it were easier to sit up than lie down. 
But he was quite happy. *^Good morning, chum,'' 
I said, ** where 'd ye cop it?" With a broad grin 
he turned and said, ** Aw, I copped it fair, not 'alf, 
a blinkin' bit o' shell in me thigh." But he smiled 
when he said it. A few hours later I found him 
sitting on his bed, wiggling his five toes to show 
he could use the leg he still had. Another boat- 
load came next day. They were a game lot. Yes, 
they had done their bit but were willing to take 
more if there was more coming to them. Some 
of the operations were worse than wounds but 
they went to them all like men. We had a cele- 
bration in one of the wards. A piece of shell was 
taken from the leg of one man. With the iron 
scrap were a button and a piece of a watch that 
had come from the clothes of the comrade on his 
right. ^*Good Christmas present, that," he said, 
as he thought of the approaching day of days. 

Christmas in Mesopotamia was a memorable 
occasion. We were separated from the country of 



A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT 143 

the first Christmas only by the broad expanse of 
the Arabian desert. Straight to the west lay 
Bethlehem. At night we had the same clear East- 
ern sky with its stars that seemed to look right 
out at ns as though they were beckoning us to 
follow. There were around us camels with their 
riders dressed in their picturesque Eastern cos- 
tumes, and carrying burdens but not of frankin- 
cense and myrrh. They were burdens of muni- 
tions and supplies for war. During the bright, 
clear, crisp nights of the Christmas season the 
riders on the camels, moving slowly off over the 
plains, seemed truly to be the Wise Men following 
a bright star in search of the King. 

We did our best to make the hospital wards look 
like Christmas. We had plenty of bandages for 
decorating. Some kind people had sent out as 
war gifts various kinds of bright cloth and paper. 
There were also pieces of torn uniforms and torn 
invalid clothes. The nurses got all the wounded 
who could use their hands to help with the deco- 
rations, and they did well. On long strips of 
bandages they pinned pretty figures cut out of 
pieces of colored cloth or of paper, and over every 



144 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

doorway was a greeting, *' Merry Christmas.'' 
We were far from home but we still remembered 
the great day and its spirit. At midnight of 
Christmas Eve a carol party walked around 
among the wards carrying a little pump organ 
and singing the glad tidings of Christmas and 
good will. And indeed there was good will. All 
were working together with a feeling of fellow- 
ship that only common suffering and common 
hope can bring. So Christmas was real even in 
the plains of Mesopotamia; perhaps more real 
than anywhere else with the scenes at the birth 
of the Prince of Peace as a background. 

For the Turks there was a Christmas present 
in the shape of two rainstorms Christmas week. 
These held up the British a great deal. Mere 
ditches in soft soil to begin with, the trenches 
had little chance when the rain came. They 
were soon small streams with bottoms of mud up 
to the ankles. Bairnsfather's Bert, who '* slept 
well enough but had to get out and rest once in a 
while,'' was the typical character while the rain 
lasted and the Tommies had to hunt around for a 
place to get a few hours of sleep in a dry spot. 



A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT 145 

But the rain did not swell the river enough to 
flood the land and the New Year came with beauti- 
ful clear weather and dry ground and a good 
spirit among the Tommies in the trenches. 

As boys on a baseball field want to start a game 
going before there is a ball, so this force along 
the Hai wanted to play its game before any of 
the accompanying, supporting movements had 
been carried out. Some men, over-anxious to get 
along with it, went over the top **on their own,'' 
just to see whether they could not find something 
extraordinary. A shower of bullets soon gave 
them to understand that there should be no holi- 
day afternoon promenade in the direction of Kut. 

The curve in the British line was straightening. 
The Turks were making a desperate stand in the 
Kadairi bend as it did so. The bend was fairly 
seamed with trenches, a maze of ditches and nuUas 
in all directions and of all sizes. The Turks 
hoped for rain. With that they could flood most 
of the land and not only keep back the British 
but cut off a good many. There was no time for 
the British to dally. If they were going to get 
to Kut they must drive the Turks out of that 



146 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

bend — and quickly. While the new year was yet 
young they went up and over, bound for the Ti- 
gris over the rough ground in the bend. They 
fought like mad, but it was a bloody battle and 
casualties were appalling. The men of the Man- 
chester Regiment and the men of the Highland 
Light Infantry took the greatest amount of pun- 
ishment. They were put into the hardest fighting, 
and over the rough but open ground these two 
regiments lost more than half their number. In 
its slaughter the battle was gruesome, but in its 
results it was splendid. Steadily the British and 
Indian troops pushed back the Turks, nearer and 
nearer the river. 

Men from the Scottish border and men from the 
border of far away Tibet, men from the plains 
of England and men from the Indian Punjab, 
fought together in the valley of death. The In- 
dians were splendid. They lived up to every 
expectation and more. A great many of the 
Indian wounded came down along with the Brit- 
ish. One curious boat-load had the decks of the 
steamer itself packed with British troops, a barge 
at one side packed with wounded Indians, and the 



A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT 147 

barge on the other side packed with Turkish pris- 
oners. We took in the British wounded, sent 
along the Indians to the Indian hospital next 
door, and sent the Turkish prisoners to their 
destination. 

The Indians took their suffering extraordinarily 
well. In the excitement of the fighting they 
brought to the front all the latent fanaticism of 
their races as they dashed over the top, but when 
away from the trenches, wounded, they had their 
test. They were more like children with bruised 
knees than anything else. When the wounds 
smarted they cried like little children, but when 
they just hurt or felt pretty comfortable they 
loved to lie and mutter or sing little songs. When- 
ever I passed a tent filled with wounded Indians, 
I always heard a sort of tom-tom drum, a tablaz- 
dholaJc, going steadily, and a little crooning tune 
like a quiver of the voice. It was queer, but it 
was their way of having a good time in the midst 
of getting over their wounds. 

An Indian boy who had been in before on er- 
rands rushed into my tent one afternoon with a 
great story. The Indian troops had just done 



148 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

something very praiseworthy at the front and the 
word had got around among the Indians that they 
had been complimented by high officials for their 
bravery. The boy had heard of the affair and 
seeking out a soldier not too far removed by caste 
to speak to him had asked about the fight. 
Whether I spoke Hindustani or not never en- 
tered his head as he blurted out excitedly, ** Se- 
poy jus' now nulla! Turk much! Bohut kJiarah! 
Bullets much! Much finished! Sepoy finish? Ne 
Sahib! Seipoj teeh! Turk finish! Ah!'' I nodded 
approval and the lad beamed all over as if the 
honor for the victory were entirely his. What had 
happened was this : some Indian troops were cut 
off from the rest of the force by a chance forma- 
tion of the ground and had to defend themselves 
in a little nulla, or dried-up water channel. The 
sallies of the Turks on the caged Indians were 
terrific, but the Indians held their ground, firing 
till their rifles were hot. Ammunition was practi- 
cally gone and the Turks were all but on them 
when help arrived. They had held their ground 
splendidly, and for good luck, when reenforced, 
drove the Turks back an extra line of trenches. 



A NEW PLUNGE FOE KUT 149 

Of course the Indians were glad of the work 
they had done. Even men of different caste re- 
joiced with them. The hard and fast lines of race 
and caste were broken by the spirit of comrade- 
ship. Not long ago the races of India were 
steeped in constant civil war. Now fighting with 
the British were all sorts of Indians, from many 
parts of India: Sikhs, Jats, Gurkhas, Mahrattas, 
Punjabis, Patans, Bopals, Eajputs, Garhwals, 
Baluchis, Dogres, Burmese, and fighting a com- 
mon enemy they were winning out. They looked 
to the Tommies as examples. 

Steadily on went the hard fighting in the Ka- 
dairi bend. One day it was in a recently dug 
Turkish trench. A long red line, dirt thrown sky- 
high, airplanes, artillery, infantry, working to- 
gether on the plunge — and it was gone. Another 
day most of the fighting was in the old nullas or 
over flat land. That was over sooner. There were 
not all the helps of modern trench systems to pro- 
long the fighting. 

When the Tommies came down to **dock,'' as 
they called the hospital, they liked best to talk of 
the hand-to-hand fighting in the open. It was 



150 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

there that the real test of the fighter came. When 
he and the enemy were out of the trenches far 
enough to grapple in the open he knew whether 
he had the ^ ^ stuff '^ or not. It was here that the 
test was most severe, because the Turks were so 
fanatical and their craze took them to such 
heights of frenzy. And here the bravery of 
Tommy and Sepoy was rewarded to the full. 

Just two weeks they had struggled to push the 
Turks back to the river. Just two weeks the 
Turks struggled manfully against their foes. In 
their trenches the Turks were the most dogged 
fighters imaginable, but on the run and in the 
open they could never hold their own. And now 
they were back to the bank of the river. The 
time for the decision had come. They must 
*^make for it" across the river or give themselves 
up. ^^They^re fighting like mad," said the latest 
rumor. It was the eighteenth of January. All 
day they fought and stuck in their positions on the 
south bank, the last they had. In the night they 
seemed to be preparing for another desperate de- 
fense. An occasional sniping during the night 
gave proof that they were still on the lookout, 



A NEW PLUNGE FOR KUT 151 

getting ready for something. Morning came and 
revealed the last Turkish positions, but no Turks. 
In the dead of night they had made their getaway 
across the river, not by bridge but by innumer- 
able little Arab boats of all sorts and descrip- 
tions. Some of them had been along the bank for 
many days, hidden in the little growth near the 
river. It was sort of a Gallipoli on a small scale, 
with the Turks the ones to get away. There was 
not a great deal of ill-feeling at losing the pris- 
oners. On the contrary there was a good deal of 
congratulation from British to Turks on the way 
in which they had managed the crossing. ** Johnny 
knows a thing or two, an' don't you forget it,'' 
said a philosophizing Tommy who had developed 
a good deal of respect for the Turk in his many 
encounters with him, **but we'll get him yet." 

With the Turks out of the bend it was time for 
action along the Hai. General Marshall had by 
this time approached to within four hundred 
yards of the Turks and was ready for heavy work. 
And heavy work he would have. 



CHAPTEE Vin 
ACT m— SERIOUS FIGHTING 

**We could see the place easy. I think we'll 
be in in a few days/' said a Lancashire lad as 
he lay on his stretcher on the deck of the paddle 
boat that was taking him from the trenches to 
the hospital. The boat, laden with wounded, was 
snuggling against the bank and the stretcher 
bearers were coming aboard to hurry the stretch- 
ers into the wards. The lad had been hit as he 
was plunging desperately over the flat ground 
only a little over a thousand yards south of Kut 
as though it were his own responsibility to take 
the town. It did look close to him, as though the 
army were about to march right into the town. 
Little he thought the War Lords had no idea of 
such a move. 

He was one of the first wounded in the action 
against the Turkish defenses on the Hai. On both 
sides of the river the British force advanced to- 

152 



SEEIOUS FIGHTING 153 

ward the little mud town of Kut. It was the final 
plunge. 

There were among the troops a few of the men 
who had fought for Kut with General Townshend 
over a year before and who had left his ranks 
wounded at Ctesiphon. *^I wish our blokes was 
still there. We'd save 'em soon enough/' said 
one of these, to express his hearty good-will to- 
ward the force he left before the siege. But there 
was no need to revive any of the troops by tales 
of the siege of Townshend and his force. The 
thought had been worn in till it was simply a part 
of every man of us in Mesopotamia. Kut and 
Townshend were synonymous. To take Kut was 
to be worthy of the sacrifice of the great General. 

Kut itself was nothing to deserve such a siege,, 
nor to deserve so large a force against it now. 
Though Kut had been great in times gone by — the 
home of Persian nobles and Mohammedan princes 
— it was nothing now but a tumbledown Turkish 
mud town. Kut had been a veritable paradise of 
gardens when the great Nahrwan canal flowed 
into the mighty Tigris at the town. But were it 
still a paradise Kut would stir the men no more to 



154 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

brave fighting and brave dying. Townshend de- 
served it. Townshend should have it. For those 
to whom the great General and his force were 
unknown except by the story of the siege it was 
enough to know that a brave British soldier had 
^' stuck it'* and only lost because he could not be 
relieved. The least these men could do was get 
to Kut now, almost a year late. And there was 
more. General Townshend had fearlessly started 
and nearly won the campaign against Bagdad. 
That must be completed. 

At any rate the determination to **get on with 
if was a guaranty that this show should be no 
tragedy. It was near the end of January, with 
the best kind of weather possible, almost like our 
early spring, and the tussle conmaenced in earnest. 
The fighting in the Kadairi bend had been 
tough, but this was more bloody still. This was 
real war. It began to look like the war on the 
western front. The flatness of the ground made it 
even worse than France. There were the lines 
and lines of reenforced trenches which had to be 
taken by storm or not at all. It meant the ^ * over 
the top'' of France; less imaginative, less roman- 



SEEIOIIS FIGHTING 155 

tic than the usual Mesopotamia warfare, with long 
marches, routs, great feats of strategy; yet this 
meant more to the square mile. Now a report of 
the taking of trenches a mile deep was hailed with 
the enthusiasm that was once called out by the 
rout of the Turkish army from Kut to Ctesiphon, 
nearly eighty miles, and there were many more 
wounded and killed now. The *^side show'' was 
playing the same sort of game that was on in the 
main grounds — the grim business of the western 
front. We seemed nearer our friends in France. 
A heavy artillery bombardment, a wild charge, a 
counter attack, bombing out, out again, in, 
through, over, all mixed up, fighting, fighting. 
That was it now. Yet the clockwork motion still 
persisted. There was never a charge until prep- 
aration guaranteed success. The artillery, with 
airplanes and sausage balloons, was making vic- 
tory sure. The sausages floating through the air 
were awful frights to the superstitious Turks and 
Arabs. ^^It's a Genie come to get us," they 
thought as they watched one wriggling in the air 
like some phantom of ill-omen. 

One of the days of this show I remember es- 



156 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

peciaUy. The wounded were overflowing witli the 
tales of the exciting day and of their victories 
over the Turks. *^I reckon it won't last long 
now, ' ' said a chap whose battalion took the brunt 
of a counter attack. * * We went up an' over pretty 
slick. By gum ! how Johnny did scrap to get back 
'ome — ^but he did no ' do it. ' ' 

It certainly was a great day for Tommy. Not 
a counter attack by the Turks was successful. Yet 
they plunged back at the Tommies, before they 
could get settled, with the last ounce of their 
strength and endurance. ^^The British must not 
take Kut.'' The message was fairly written on 
their faces as they hurled themselves back at the 
trenches they had lost. 

**I reckon all sorts o' things happen to us poor 
blokes," said one of the more unfortunate of the 
wounded. ^^We got into Johnny's first trench 
right 'nough, but the fellows with the bombs got 
caught in a mess of shells on the way over and 
we was standin' in the blinkin' fire trench without 
a bomb. The Turks were scrappin' like mad to 
get back 'ome an' there we were with nothin' but 
rifles to stop 'em. Johnny was near 'ome when 



SERIOUS FIGHTING 157 

the reserves got to us. An' then mebbe we didn't 
straf 'im. Not 'alf." 

About this time there was a startling event. 
A shell whizzed from a British gun on its way to 
the town of Kut. An instant — and *'zip, bang." 
The beautiful blue tile minaret in Kut, the only 
minaret in the town, which had stood sentinel over 
the flat roofs during all the days of the siege, 
crashed to the ground. Nothing but the base and 
a jagged top halfway up remained to show where 
had been the beautiful little dome. The balcony 
on which the priest was wont to stand to call the 
Mohammedans to prayer was in ruins. 

But others than the priest had used that bal- 
cony during the battle against the advancing 
British. Artillery observers had used it and felt 
safe because they thought the British dare not 
destroy the holy tower while they had Moham- 
medans in their army. But it was gone. The 
British were too near the town to allow it to stand 
and serve for machine guns as well as for ob- 
servers. 

It is an interesting fact that the day follow- 
ing the ruining of the minaret a notice was read 



158 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

to tlie Indian Mohanmiedan troops in the army 
that permission had been received from the High 
Priest of the Mohammedan people in India to 
destroy that bit of sacred property. 

Anyone who has traveled in the Orient can 
appreciate the significance of the destruction. 
Even though Mohammedans were fighting against 
each other, the property of mosques was sacred 
to both sides. At one time during some trouble 
between the Turkish officials and some Arab 
settlers over a district sacred to the Shiah Mo- 
hammedans, one of the mosques of the Arabs was 
injured. A fight ensued which rivaled the worst 
of the Great War in its bloodshed. To murder as 
reprisal for the desecration of a mud mosque was 
a holy act. ^ ' The sword is the instrument of Mo- 
hammed. ' ^ 

The Indian Mohammedans were splendidly and 
carefully treated by the British and they splen- 
didly returned thanks by their fighting. And 
fighting Turks and Arabs was a painful business. 
Every sort of bullet, from the most modern 
''made in Berlin'' to the old-fashioned bullets of 
the Arab irregulars, the lead turned around so it 



SEEIOUS FIGHTING 159 

struck like a dumdum, came down to us as ^^ tro- 
phies ^^ in the bodies of the wounded. There 
would be new faces for many, and new legs and 
arms, but they were a game lot. ^^I reckon I 
copped one and a half this time,'' said one chap. 
He had lost a good part of his side and had to lie 
flat on his chest with his chin buried in his blanket, 
but he wore a smile that would *^buck up'' the 
most gloomy of mortals. 

For strong men laid out with wounds and still 
excited from the fighting, many of them on a 
casualty list for the first time, the inaction was 
the worst agony of all. The excitement they had 
been through made them wish for more, yet they 
must lie and do nothing. They did not care to 
have the same kind of excitement right away, but 
were quite willing even for that if need be. One 
would think that when they had taken off their 
blood-stained uniforms and had got in between the 
sheets for the first time, probably, since they left 
home, they would think of the home where there 
were faces they would love to see. But no — their 
thoughts turned continually to the scene of the 
^* scrap" where they ^* copped" their wounds. I 



160 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

had made, on a piece of rubber cloth, a map of 
the country where the fighting was going on, and 
there wasn't a man but was keen as a tiger to get 
hold of the thing and trace with his finger the part 
of the front where his company had charged and 
the spot where he had stopped a bullet, or a piece 
of a shell or a bomb. Many had a most vague idea 
of what part of the country they were fighting 
in, and wandered with their fingers all over the 
map reading all the words and names till they 
located something that sounded familiar. ^^I say, 
chum," one said, ^^ here's all these places we 
stayed at when we were tryin' to get the blokes 
in Kut last year. Sodom — Gomorrah — Pool of 

Siloam Say, is this really the land of the 

Bible f He was much disappointed to hear that 
the real Bible land was far across the Arabian 
desert. ^^ Here's Kala Haji Fahan where we 
straffed the ^loose-wallas,' " said another. Loose- 
wallas once meant ^ thieving Arabs," but it had 
come to apply to all Arabs, no matter how 
*' noble" they might be. And from another, 
** Let's see — ^I was on the other side of the Hai. 
It must 'ave been 'ere that we straffed 'em, an' 



SERIOUS FIGHTING 161 

about 'ere that that blinkin' bit o' shell copped 
me in the leg. I reckon that was a scrap ! ' ' Every 
man had something to say about the map and 
every man felt that his wound was more impor- 
tant when he had seen the picture of the bit of 
ground where he had been wounded in taking his 
part in an advance. 

The talking of men about the ^^ scraps'' did 
more to keep up the good spirits than anything 
else, for they were winning. The nurses were al- 
ways glad to listen to the stories and to add some- 
thing cheery to each. Before long they could tell 
as good tales as the men themselves. They picked 
up the Tommy's words and ways of thought. 
They picked up the army feeling that everything 
is common property during war. The Indian 
word ''pukero'' soon found its way even into their 
conversation. The word means ^^get," with no 
implication as to how one is to get. The word 
served admirably among the men and became a 
part of their language, along with ^^blighty" and 
many other words once Indian. It would not do 
to say the sergeant gave away something to a 
friend or to say that a Tommy walked in some- 



162 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

where, found something he wanted and took it 
along, but puJcero always served. One morning 
in the wards there came word that there was to 
be an inspection by the A. D. M. S. It was neces- 
sary that everything be shipshape. Somehow or 
other several bowls were missing from one of 
the wards. *^ Orderly!'' said the Sister in charge, 
*'we must have six more bowls.'' *^ Haven't got 
'em, Sister, and there's no more to be issued." 
**Then pukero some," said the Sister. It came 
just as naturally as ^^Go to the corner grocery 
and get some." But there is no corner grocery 
in the army. It is either get an issue, pukero or 
go without. 

Now at the front, the British force was almost 
touching the river at Kut itself. It was fighting 
its way to the very end of the river Hai, where it 
joined the Tigris at Kut. Kut lay in a horseshoe 
curve of the river hanging from the north by its 
two ends. Just west, another horseshoe, the 
Dahra bend, hung in the opposite direction, its 
ends poiQting south. To get the Turkish force 
beyond the ends of that horseshoe meant closing 
them in it. Turkish guns all around the outside of 



SEEIOUS FIGHTING 163 

the Dahra bend, especially in Kut itself, meant 
to have something to say about that. They were 
already busy. But not these shells, nor anything 
else, could stop the steady march now. 

The first of February was celebrated by bring- 
ing down a German Fokker airplane. Wild and 
marvelous exploits followed each other in quick 
succession. On the second, a section of cavalry 
again galloped up the river twenty miles past Kut 
and menaced the Turkish line of communication 
with the force. Next day east of the Hai the Turks 
were back to their very last line and they crossed 
to the west bank of the little river, bound for the 
Dahra bend where they would soon find them- 
selves closed in — and no way out. There was not 
a Turk on the south side of the river east of the 
Hai. The great chain which was formed so long 
ago, with one end on the Tigris east of Kut, was 
now bringing its other end up to join the Tigris 
west of Kut. That would certainly mean trouble. 
The Turks could not afford to let the Tigris be 
in British hands both in front and behind. If we 
could read signs, however, their fears were soon 
to become facts. The army that was to keep back 



164 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

tlie British from the Tigris was fast falling back 
to the Dahra bend. 

The old licorice factory, operated by Turkish 
merchants, not far from the Tigris, now became 
the objective. This old landmark was held by 
Townshend during his valiant stand in Kut and 
enabled him to keep the Turks back from the 
river bank. Would it now be able to keep the 
British back in the same way? From across the 
river, in Kut, the Turks were sending over a well- 
directed fire. It was cannons to right of them, 
cannons to left of them, now as the British ad- 
vanced, gradually squeezing the enemy into the 
loop. The fire of the British was centering on 
the licorice factory and its remains were fast 
disappearing. It had once been a landmark. 
Now it was a shell crater. Another day and it 
was a part of the British trench system. The 
only thing that lay between the British and the 
Tigris was gone. As in the Kadairi bend, the 
Turks were pressed back against the river bank 
and must get across or surrender. '*We have 
waited for the rain and mud to stop you,'* said 
one of the young Turkish officers, taken at the 



SERIOUS FIGHTING 165^ 

licorice factory, ^^but fate willed that it should 
not rain.'' Kismet, the supreme of supremes to 
a Mohammedan, had willed. The dictate of Fate 
can not be beaten by man or beast, by war imple- 
ments or peace agencies. Kismet is supreme. 
The rain was just one day late. The day after 
the taking of the licorice factory it came down in 
torrents. At first the mud was just a thin, slip- 
pery film over the surface of the ground, slippery 
as ice. It was hard to walk in, almost impossible 
to run in. Next day it rained again, and the next. 
The film of mud gave place to a deep, sticky quag- 
mire. Every footstep meant carrying a load that 
stuck all around one's boots from three to six 
inches thick. There was a wait in hopes of better 
weather. Still it rained. Another move, a drive 
through a sea of mud. But it was the last. The 
Turks were in their last position in the bend. 

The rain coming late had served only to 
dampen their spirits. The half-hearted attempt 
to get across the river failed. There was a mis- 
take in the Turkish orders and they were not 
ready to cross when the little Gurkhas, in their 
enthusiasm, were right up in their trenches.. 



166 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Hardly a boat-load got away. The game was up. 
Just two montlis before, in the middle of Decem- 
ber, the scrap had begun. Now in the middle of 
February the whole of the south bank of the Ti- 
gris was British. All during the evening of the 
fifteenth and the day of the sixteenth the Turks 
came out of their trenches with white flags tied to 
their bayonets. There were 2000 prisoners all 
together. Marching up toward the British lines, 
they presented a most extraordinary appearance, 
a long line of tired, disheveled fellows with 
slouchy balaklava hats and loose pajama-shaped 
uniforms, covered from head to foot with mud. 
They had shoes — most of them — ^but they were in 
bad condition. Some had strips of burlap wrapped 
around their feet instead. Slipping and sliding in 
the mud, their loose clothes weighed down by 
the mud in all sorts of queer positions and shapes 
on their bodies, plunging along toward their new 
masters and their lost trenches, they were a for- 
lorn-looking crowd. They had tried long and hard 
in the vain attempt to keep back the infidel Brit- 
ish. Now perhaps they could at least get some 
rest. They had had a pretty hard time of it ever 



SERIOUS FIGHTING 167 

since the campaign started. Canglit napping at 
first when they found the British in a great chain 
halfway around them, their communication al- 
ways in danger, the Arabs that were fighting with 
them turning against them when they were losing, 
to plunder and murder the wounded, or deserting 
just when needed, they had been bitterly dis- 
heartened by the steady train of events and the 
steady march of the British. The rain would not 
come; the river would not rise as expected; the 
British airplanes would be just where they were 
not wanted. No wonder they were a pathetic lot. 
**If there's fighting to be done, give me Johnny 
Turk, ' ' was Tommy 's opinion. * ' He 's clean right 
through and will ^ stick it' to the finish." But 
here in the bend was the finish. There was no 
way to get out and the valiant fighters became a 
wretched lot of hoodlums. The various and sun- 
dry opinions about the Turk as a specimen seem 
to end in the fact that, though a game fighter in 
actual warfare, behind the lines Johnny Turk is 
studying Prussianism and how to make vassals of 
the peoples near by or get rid of them. What 
Germany did to Belgium, Turkey did to Armenia. 



168 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

As a prisoner the Turk returns to the same game. 
As they passed us on the way to a prison camp, 
they looked for all the world like the distrustful, 
intriguing, greedy pupils of German Kultur. 

They wanted two things : sleep and shoes. They 
^cted decently enough, but had hard work re- 
sponding to the good treatment tendered them by 
the British. They were put on our boats, sent 
down to the gulf and thence to India. We gave 
them some cigarettes to help them on their way, 
but many refused them — thought they were pois- 
oned or loaded. 

Two things were always done for them by their 
captors: they were given baths and fumigated; 
and they were given new clothes, uniforms of In- 
dian soldiers. 

With the surrender of the Turks in the Dahra 
bend, one great task remained — to cross the river. 
No amount of straight plunging, no matter how 
brave, could do that. The days of taking line 
after line of trenches by mere assault had passed. 
Strategy would win now, nothing else. It would 
do little good to put men in boats and start them 
across three hundred yards of river to fight their 



SERIOUS FIGHTING 169 

way against a perfect rain of macliine-guii bullets. 
That would be hopeless. Every man would be 
killed before a single boat could reach the Turk- 
ish shore. Somehow or other the Turks must not 
know of the crossing. We looked to the man at 
the helm, General Maude. He would do it, we 
knew. How was a mystery, but not for long. 



CHAPTER IX 

ACT IV— THE ROUT OF THE TURKS— FIRST PHASE 

* * We 're attacking at Sanniyat ! ^ ' came the word. 
It was like the echo of the beginning of the cam- 
paign. But that had been a feint. This was real. 
It was only the day after the surrender of the 
Turks in the Dahra bend. The news was as much 
a surprise as the opening of the campaign had 
been. For the British to take Sanniyat seemed 
almost an impossibility. To the Turks an attempt 
at it seemed madness. But madness or not, the 
men of Scotland, of England, and of India made 
the desperate charge across the deadly No Man's 
Land. There had been calm at Sanniyat, except 
for occasional showers of shells and bullets and 
bombs, from the time of the opening of the cam- 
paign, two months ago. The storm had long held 
off. Now it broke with a crash. The Turks were 
surprised and the British got a foothold in their 

170 



THE EOUT OF THE TURKS 171 

first line. But there was no time to consolidate 
before the Turks were back as though the British 
had stepped on the catch that let drive a sledge 
hammer. Casualties were heavy. Our troops de- 
served the victory if ever anybody did ; but it was 
denied. The Turks *^got back ^ome.'' Sanniyat 
could not be taken. 

Busy days followed for us in hospital — ^the bus- 
iest of the year. But work is only a pleasure when 
there is such response as comes from wounded 
men. Some of the men had smoked their last 
*4'ags.'' We found them some and they were as 
thankful as though we had found them bags of 
gold. Some had no hands to hold them or light 
them, but when a chum stuck one into another's 
mouth and held a match to it a smile came over his 
face with a meaning that words could not express. 
At night the pain grew worse and the smiles less 
broad, but there was never a whimper. One man 
had copped it a little worse than he could stand 
and was gradually approaching the time to ^^go 
west.'' He whispered to ask whether he might 
have a fag. He had it and the lines of his face 
that was drawn in pain relaxed in an easy smile. 



172 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

There is something very beautiful about the 
Tommy's ^' going west," to the land of the gor- 
geous setting sun, to the land of peace and beauty 
into which the great red ball of evening goes to 
rest. The men of that attack on Sanniyat de- 
served the finest. 

There was something in the air that spelled a 
gigantic move — and very soon. The two great ob- 
stacles remained: one, the river along the Dahra 
bend; the other, the Sanniyat trenches of the 
Turks. But meeting those obstacles with a su- 
preme effort at the same instant would be too 
much for the stretched-out resources of the Turks. 
They might hold back the attack at Sanniyat but 
they could not hold back attacks at every point on 
the river for miles. 

Now every inch of the British line from the 
Dahra bend to Sanniyat was in motion. At the 
Hai parties of men were rowing together, prac- 
ticing for the final sprint of the big race for Kut 
that should take the British over the line, victors. 
The bridging bands of engineers were working on 
the bridge near the old licorice factory. The 
Turks saw this and watched keenly. They saw 



THE EOUT OF THE TURKS 173 

the British get ready their gun positions and artil- 
lery observation posts. They saw them get all 
the bridging material ready for the leap across 
the river while a barrage of shells from the artil- 
lery should make hash of the trenches in the Kut 
peninsula. They saw their duty also. Down came 
their guns to the peninsula, and their machine 
guns to hidden positions where they could forbid 
the boats of the British from crossing the river. 
They were ready. 

Five days had passed since the attack at Sanni- 
yat. * ' Charge ! ' ' again rang out the order there. 
There was more at stake this time. Everything 
depended on success. The ^^ punch'' was there, 
and cutting their way through a wall of lead and a 
maze of barbed wire the Tommies, Jocks and Se- 
poys found themselves again in the first line of 
Turkish Sanniyat, the untakable. There was no 
stopping them this time. The counter attacks 
could not get back the lost land for the Turks. On 
moved the raging battle steadily toward the sec- 
ond line. Now some of that was taken, now nearly 
all, with the dead strewn thick and an army of 
wounded. It was like the desperate charge of 



174 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Townshend — just before his check. Again there 
were the inevitable desperate counter attacks. 
Once, twice, thrice came back the Turks, wild from 
the loss of their cherished position. All Turkey 
and the Kaiser besides had their faith in the 
trenches at Sanniyat. The fourth attack was ter- 
rific, and it seemed successful. The British left 
was driven out. But there was no check here. 
The right held fast. The game Scotchmen of the 
Seaforth Highlanders made a new record to add 
to their list. While they held back the Turks on 
the right and helped against the Turks on their 
left, the Indians came back and retook the lost po- 
sition. The British could counter-attack as well 
as the Turks. This was the last straw. Two more 
Turkish attacks followed these, but the Turks had 
lost their first two lines of wonderful Sanniyat 
for good. 

Something was stirring far away on the other 
side of the river. The British were getting ready 
to cross. Turks were leaving Kut to help at 
Sanniyat. Now they were needed at both places. 
They began to get rattled. But they would risk 
anything to get back their famous Sanniyat 




A fire trench in the British trenches at Sanniyat 

{From- a plwtografli by Mr. Weir Stewart). 




Old mud wells of the Arabs on the Tigris near Baerdad 



THE EOUT OF THE TURKS 175 

trenches. They risked too much. G-radually the 
line along the Turkish side of the river near Kut 
grew thinner and less confident. 

It was evening, bnt it was not quiet. Every 
little while the Turks heard from the opposite side 
of the river, a boat launched into the water, or the 
noise of a cart clanking along carrying bridging 
material, or the sound of men talking excitedly. 
Then they saw a boat in the stream and *^ let go'* 
with their machine guns. Just east of the town a 
party gained their bank. There was a skirmish, a 
gun pulled into one of the boats, then a getaway 
before Turks could reach the scene in sufficient 
numbers. One minute there was noise near Kut 
where they had seen everything prepared; five 
minutes later there was noise farther down the 
river at Magasis. Slowly but surely the Turks 
were concentrating at Kut all the forces they did 
not need at Sanniyat. There was a great hubbub 
at Kut. The British were trying to cross! But 
were they? 

The eastern sky was just beginning to gather 
a few dim traces of light when quietly, calmly, 
some boats started across the river far up to the 



176 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

west, around the next bend of the river. While 
the enemy machine guns sought for crossing 
parties down by Kut or Magasis, the boats were 
launched at Shumrun, miles away. In the dark- 
ness three parties of infantry formed, ready to 
move noiselessly across the river. There was not 
a sound. Not a wheel squeaked as the carts moved 
over the ground; not a man spoke; not a boat 
spattered as it was lowered slowly into the wa- 
ter. At three different places the boats went 
across. The fleet farthest east caught the eye of 
the Turks and was greeted with a rain of ma- 
chine-gun bullets. They only hoped to be buffers 
for the parties upstream, and they did their job. 
There were so many killed in the boats that they 
failed to get across themselves, but the two other 
parties were safer. The middle party gained a 
footing on the Turkish bank, almost won a po- 
sition, then f eU back before the fire from the Turk- 
ish machine guns. But the men in the party far- 
thest up the river were safe. They were no sooner 
across than there were some three hundred Turk- 
ish prisoners and five machine guns for their prize. 
It was over. The British had the greater number 



THE EOUT OF THE TUEKS 177 

of men at the crucial place at the proper time. It 
was the goal of all military strategy. General 
Maude had won. The British were on the north- 
em bank. They beat back the Turks to get a 
space more than enough for the engineers to work 
safely on the bridge. But still more had hap- 
pened. 

At Sanniyat the Turks were losing more of 
their precious ground. Almost at the instant that 
the boats crossed the Tigris the British attacked 
at Sanniyat. The third line fell like the first two. 
Then the fourth. More frantic counter attacks 
followed this. The Turks seemed not at all upset 
by the fact that the British were crossing behind 
them. Perhaps they did not know. Word evi- 
dently came very suddenly of the crossing at 
Shumrun. For it seemed as though the troops 
at Sanniyat were just getting ready for another 
counter attack when they **cut and ran/^ trying 
hopelessly to check the advance of the British 
while filling up their trenches to get their guns 
across as they fled. The British airmen were 
after them now. They brought down two Turk 
machines and flew low over the troops as they 



178 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

fled, pouring a rain of shells into their ranks. 
The Turks were losing everything. 

In the Shumrun bend Turkish cavalry and in- 
fantry were trying to get down along the west 
edge of the peninsula to keep the British from 
crossing the river. But the bridge was fairly 
springing across the water. By half past four in 
the afternoon the army was crossing. The bridge, 
built in nine hours across a river in flood, three 
hundred and forty yards wide, was a fact. That 
was the end. With the British crossing over the 
filled-in trenches at Sanniyat, and crossing the 
river at Shumrun, there was no hope for the bul- 
wark at Bagdad. Kut must fall. 

The artillery made short work of the attempts 
of the Turks to edge their way down the penin- 
sula toward the bridge. They gave that up. Then 
one last stand they made at the top of the penin- 
sula. They wished they might hold the British 
in that bend the way their men were enclosed in 
the Dahra bend. They stood long enough to let 
the troops from Sanniyat get past Kut and then 
it was all up. Pell-mell they rushed up the river, 
leaving guns, stores, shells, small-arm ammuni- 



THE EOUT OF THE TURKS 179 

tion, equipment, bridging material, tents, trench 
mortars, strewn over the country in their wake. 
The British airplanes again swooped down on 
their prey, like great gulls swooping over the 
surface of the ocean. They were in their element 
— and inflicting terrible punishment. 

Another branch of the service now came to life 
— the Eoyal Navy. The war in Mesopotamia was 
above all a river w^ar. The army which once got 
away from the river without river transport and 
without water would surely be lost. Yet the navy 
had had little to do. The trenches at Sanniyat, 
lying, as they did, along the river for miles, for- 
bade any boat to pass there. There were, never- 
theless, a few things the insect-named boats could 
do. They were fast little fellows, could make over 
twenty knots upstream, and drew only three feet 
of water. Sometimes in the stillness of the night 
they sped silently up the stream, through the 
Turkish lines, shelled an unsuspecting Turkish 
post and darted back downstream to safety. 
Sometimes they helped in an attack on some 
trenches by acting as artillery from the river with 
their stern 12-pounders. 



180 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

But now was the chance they had waited for 
from the beginning of the campaign. Tearing up- 
stream at full speed, five of them were soon 
abreast of the retreating Turks, pouring machine- 
gun bullets into their disorganized ranks. Up be- 
yond the Turks were the Turkish transports and 
gunboats, getting away with all possible haste 
from the approaching British army and navy. 
The Fire-fly, captured a year ago from the Brit- 
ish, was far up the line. To chase it would mean 
to run the gauntlet past the entire Turkish force 
near the bank. The Turks were now making a 
desperate stand to check the advancing British 
force, and their artillery was in action. But for 
the monitors, ^ theirs but to do and die'' — and 
they did. One after another the three larger boats 
pushed past the Turkish artillery. As they did so 
the Firefly, which they were chasing, opened fire 
over the low land from around the bend to the left. 
With land artillery pouring shell at the starboard 
side and the gunboat at the port side, it was in- 
deed running the gauntlet. The first boat got 
barely a scratch, the second more, a shell through 
the funnel and a deck full of shrapnel — ^the artil- 



THE ROUT OF THE TURKS 181 

lery was finding the range. Then came the thirds 
H.M.S. Moth. The artillery had the range now, to 
the foot. The boat's machine gunners were swept 
off the deck, everyone wounded. Shells began 
plunging through the deck and sides, and shrapnel 
and rifle bullets made the deck and stacks look like 
sieves. One shell got into the engine room, but it 
was a *^dud'' and failed to explode. The doctor 
tried to treat the wounded on the gun deck but he 
was soon hit himself — and the wounds had to wait. 
Finally the Moth got through the rain of shells 
and bullets and opened her big stem six-inch gun 
on the Turks along the shore. The execution was 
immense. 

The Firefly was recaptured along with several 
other boats, and the flotilla sped down the river. 
The Moth came to our pier to put off her dead and 
wounded. I was on a paddle boat convoy crowded 
with Tommies, about three hundred of them, 
wounded in the final dash for Kut. The Moth 
swung around a bend, passed us, turned upstream 
and pulled up alongside. She had eight big shell- 
holes in her armor, one dangerously near the wa- 
ter line. The stretcher-bearers brought off the 



182 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

wounded and dead of the crew. They had stood 
at their tasks like men and as we watched the pro- 
cession of stretchers leave the boat everyone felt 
a thrill of pride at being a part of the force that 
had such a gallant navy. Not long after, the Fire- 
fly came down under her own power, a Union Jack 
flying over the Turkish crescent ensign. 

The accounts of the latest startling events from 
the mouths of the wounded Tommies were numer- 
ous and diverse. The men were so excited they did 
not want to stay in the hospital a minute. Nor 
did any of the rest of us. Fortunately there was 
to be new work for the stage hands in the city of 
Bagdad as soon as the troops should get there, 
and I was fortunate enough to be one of those to 
go to the famous city as soon as it became a city 
of the British. Everyone of the wounded Tom- 
mies was eager to go along back with me to follow 
the fleeing Turks into Bagdad. For there was no 
more talk or thought of Kut. Kut was a thing 
of the distant past. It was Bagdad we were fight- 
ing for now. One man in the cavalry was so anx- 
ious to get back with his regiment that he could 
not be kept in bed with his wound. He had a bul- 



THE ROUT OF THE TURKS 183 

let through his leg, but after two days in dock he 
got up, made his bed, and refused to get into it 
again. To call his bluff, the doctors shipped him 
into the convalescent camp. There he was exam- 
ined and found unfit, with the wound still fresh. 
* ^ If you will get two pair of boxing gloves, Sir, I 
think I can show anyone here that I am fit. Sir," 
he said. **A11 right. Trot along on the next boat,'^ 
was the response. He was the liveliest man in the 
camp and while he waited overnight for his boat, 
he entertained an audience of over a thousand 
wounded gathered in an opening in the clump of 
palms near the camp. The weather was mild 
enough to allow the wounded to hobble around 
outside and all were there who could get out of 
bed to watch the show. One fellow who had been 
a comic opera singer in London got some chums to 
carry him from his bed and prop him up on the 
stage so he could sit in the open-air ** concert 
halP' and sing. 

There were a great many such as he, who had 
left the advance, wounded, just as the rout was 
surely off for Bagdad. They did want so to enter 
the city with the victorious army — ^not that it was 



184 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Bagdad. They would probably get a cliance to see 
Bagdad later. But the cliance to enter the city j 
with the first entrance of the British was what 
they wanted. But they were too badly wounded 
for that. 

There was something to console them in the 
trophies they brought down from the rout. One 
man had a splendid gold watch made in Constan- 
tinople, once the property of a Turkish officer. 
Another had a dirty balaklava hat that he said 
he took off the head of a Turk, the rest of the fel- 
low being nowhere to be seen. Evidently the 
Arabs had had a grudge against him. It was like 
the stories of the French front when a proud 
Tommy comes back to the trenches with a German 
officer's sword tied around his waist. Every man 
tried his best to get some souvenir of the Turks 
as his share of the ^^ spoil.'' 

The prisoners began to come in. Some of them 
were Germans. There were Germans on a Turk- 
ish gunboat, and some Germans on the gun crews 
of the artillery. But only a handful had got so far 
away from the homeland. Only one German offi- 
cer was located, killed at the crossing of the Ti- 



THE EOUT OF THE TURKS 185 

gris. The Germans swore continually at the 
Turks and the Turks returned the sentiment with 
interest. Surely the alliance of the Central Pow- 
ers is no love match. 

On the rout they were all in the same trouble. 
With cavalry to the right, gunboats to the left, 
and infantry and artillery to the rear, the retreat 
was fraught with tremendous difficulties. The 
army became more and more disorganized and de- 
moralized. They' tried to get their guns away but 
that was impossible. Many of them they threw 
into the river. Their wreckage was left strewn 
over the whole country, and there were every- 
where signs of panic: bullocks entangled in the 
ropes and chains of the carts; guns with broken 
wheels ; motor cars with parts of guns stuck in the 
engines to render them useless to the British; 
carts overturned and their contents lying all over 
the ground ; oil drums, boots, hats, telephone wire, 
tents, everything destroyed or half destroyed; 
piles of equipment in flames in the attempt to 
make it useless to the British; oil poured over 
things and left, where there had been no time to 
finish the burning. Farther along there were the 



186 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

wounded Turks whom the Arab marauders or the 
deserters from the Turks had caught, looted, and 
left with wounds of the meanest sort to die on the 
jfield. Some of the wounded tried in vain to get to 
the British and become prisoners, only to be 
stripped and cut by the bloodthirsty Arabs. For 
four days the havoc kept up. Four thousand pris- 
oners, thirty-nine guns, twenty-two mortars and 
eleven machine guns was the toll of captures. 

Then it was time to think it over. In the same 
place where Townshend had stopped after his 
dramatic capture of Kut, the new army under 
General Maude now stopped, at Azizie. After the 
halt of Townshend, had come the decision for the 
fatal advance on Bagdad, against Townshend *s 
advice. There need be no decision now. The 
troops were already off for Bagdad. But they 
must stop and get settled. Eighty miles of new 
territory had to be organized and protected. A 
new line of communications was a big undertak- 
ing when they had to keep up transport from 
Busra to Azizie. There were all the ruins of the 
Turkish retreat to be collected and taken care of. 
The Turks had left two-thirds of their artillery, 



THE ROUT OF THE TURKS 187 

including every one of the 5.9 howitzers, and 
though they had thrown many of them into the 
water, the guns were still visible and might be 
pulled back on the bank. 

Nothing but encouraging word came from Lon- 
don now. There was no bogey of *^A safe game 
must be played in Mesopotamia,*^ or any discus- 
sion as to the possibilities of the force. ** Trans- 
port, supply and hospital services are as well done 
as in any campaign in the whole history of the 
world" was the statement made this time in Lon- 
don. 

Nearly a week was necessary to make every- 
thing ready to continue the advance. The Turks 
were again at the position from which they threw 
General Townshend back, over a year before, and 
caused all the trouble. They were too demoral- 
ized to make any great stand here now. And be- 
sides they had no guns but what might come down 
to them from Bagdad. There was no time for any 
reenforcements to come from Persia or Palestine. 
Both those ^'shows'' were up in the air about the 
retreat. The Turks in Persia were being supplied 
from Bagdad. With Bagdad fallen they would 



188 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

need all they had in men and gnns to hold their 
own. And Palestine was across the awful Ara- 
bian desert. The Turks there were too far away 
to help — and if they did leave Palestine to help, 
the British would advance on Jerusalem. There 
was no hope for Bagdad this time. The treasured 
town of Kut had fallen and the trenches at Sanni- 
yat were nothing but a jumbled mass of dirt. 
Great Sanniyat, on which the Turks had pinned 
their hope, was gone. 



CHAPTER X 

ACT V— THE ROUT OF THE TURKS— SECOND PHASE 

It was the fifth of March, just ten days after the 
crossing of the Tigris. The Turks, afraid to make 
another stand, moved out of their trenches before 
the British advanced to attack. They moved right 
on past Ctesiphon, past the great old arch that 
had been the gloomy signal of defeat to Town- 
shend and was the challenge to Maude as the Brit- 
ish force concentrated at Azizie. 

From Kut to Ctesiphon, to Bagdad. So the 
Arab pilots of the days of Sindhad staged their 
journeys up the winding Tigris. Now the British 
armies were staging their journeys in the same 
way. Once the last stage, to Bagdad, was denied. 
Now the path was open. The British force moved 
out of Azizie and on to Bagdad. 

Fifteen miles south of Bagdad the river Diala 
flows from the northeast into the Tigris. The 

189 



190 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Turks fled across the Diala and took up a position 
on the north bank just as the British reached the 
south bank. The machine guns of the Turks for- 
bade the British to cross, yet before the British 
artillery could get into position after its rapid 
pursuit of the Turks along the Tigris a body of 
infantry attempted to cross in the face of the 
Turkish guns. 

A man who was in that first attempt to cross the 
Diala told me the story not long after. ^^We got 
there on the seventh,'* he said. *^With the moon 
an* all, the night was light as day. Before there 
was time for the guns to get into action, there 
came a call for volunteers to cross the river in 
boats. * I could do with a bit of armor plate, * says 
one. * Carry on ! * says another. Pretty soon half 
a dozen boats were in the river just above where 
it met the Tigris. I was in one of them. We were 
paddlin' over easy as you please. It didn't look 
far across the river — ^mebbe a hundred yards — 
but when we were only halfway across, oV Abdul 
gets his wind up and lets go with his machine 
guns. It was all up with us. There wasn't one 
that didn't cop it somewhere. I was luckiest of 



THE EOUT OF THE TUEKS 191 

the lot. I only got a cushy one. But we didn't get 
across by a long shot. More chaps tried after that 
and then more. But there was no crossin^ Our 
boat drifted downstream and we got picked up by 
hospital gangs an' gravediggers. " 

But General Marshall's force could not be 
checked by one failure. Any force that could do 
what his force had done on the Hai, in the Kadairi 
bend and at Shumrun, could get across the little 
river Diala sooner or later. It was evident to 
everyone that it would be sooner. 

Next day the force prepared for the second at- 
tempt at crossing. The force under General 
Cobbe, the one which had fought at Sanniyat, 
crossed the Tigris to the west bank, just below the 
mouth of the Diala river, and swung up the Tigris 
across the river from General Marshall's force. 
The crossing was none too soon. As a last resort, 
the Turks were trying to get down the river on 
that side to hold the British away from their 
sacred city. There was a considerable force of 
them not far upstream from the crossing. 

Further action hinged on the success of the next 
attempt to cross the Diala. Once across there, the 



192 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

two British columns could march for Bagdad 
along both banks of the river Tigris. At night 
again, men were called for to cross the river. What 
followed rivals anything in the range of military 
annals. Behind a barrage of dust and dirt thrown 
up by a rain of shells, sixty men of the North Lan- 
cashire regiment got their boats across, and 
gained a footing on the Turkish bank. They found 
a natural defense in a dried-up water cut, near the 
bank of the river. Here they determined to stay, 
and stay they did; just sixty of them facing 
twenty times their number. The machine guns of 
the British sent a stream of bullets across to help 
the little force break up the Turkish attacks. 
Time after time masses of Turks rushed at the 
little position, cut their way through the machine- 
gun bullets from across the river and through the 
rifle bullets of the little band, right up to the men 
themselves, only to fall back, beaten by an invin- 
cible little body of Englishmen. All night they at- 
tacked, and all night were driven back. Next day 
the men stuck at their posts, though there was 
still no way of getting men across to help them 
in the light of day. Ammunition was getting very 



THE ROUT OF THE TUEKS 193 

low. A dozen or so were put out of it and the 
rest took their bullets. From the south bank 
their fellows were trying in vain to send over 
ammunition tied to skyrockets. Each time the 
aim was better and the rockets came nearer the 
bank. But not one got all the way. What re- 
mained of the sixty men had to ** stick it'^ with 
what they had. Night came again, the third night 
of attacks on the Diala. There had been no chance 
for rest, but the men in the httle trench on the 
Turkish bank of the river felt no need of rest. 
Midnight came and still they were holding their 
own. They had been there over twenty-four hours 
now. The Turks were getting hopeful that per- 
haps they had checked the advance up the Tigris. 
But a new surprise was in store. While on the 
west side of the Tigris General Cobbe 's force was 
marching toward Bagdad, General Marshall's 
force on the Diala marched farther up that little 
river, shot a bridge across and swung around be- 
hind the Turks before they knew what was up. 
Some who were still firing at the men that re- 
mained of the dogged little band were bayoneted 
from the rear. Forty men of the sixty North 



194 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Lancashires remained alive, and they rejoined 
their comrades proud as Punch at what they had 
done. Another pell-mell retreat began, and the 
two forces on either side of the Tigris marched 
toward Bagdad, just a day's march away. 

That one day saw a great many happenings in 
the realms of the Turks. It was the last chance 
for the Turks in Bagdad to destroy everything 
that could be of use to the British. They had been 
busy at the task for many days, as with Kut gone 
there was no real hope for Bagdad. But here was 
the last chance. They must get everything they 
could out of the city, destroy what they could not 
move, and get away themselves. The *^ brave'' 
German staff officers who had been ** directing" 
operations from their cool cellars in Bagdad were 
well on their way to Constantinople. They were 
not waiting till they would have to run for their 
lives. The German operators at the great wire- 
less station in Bagdad had sent to Berlin the news 
of the Turkish reverses and the approaching loss 
of Bagdad, and had then destroyed the immense 
wireless tower. They had destroyed or tried to 
destroy all the railway material of the Berlin- 



THE ROUT OF THE TURKS 195 

Bagdad Railway in Bagdad — and then had gone, 
with what of the railway could be moved, to the 
other end of that section of the line, Samarra, on 
their way to Berlin. 

The Turks had only a few hours now in which 
to finish up the work of removing and destroying, 
and to get out of the city themselves. All the 
townspeople of Bagdad, whether Syrians, Chal- 
deans, Arabs, Armenians, Sabeans, Persians or 
Jews, were glad to see the Turks pack up and 
leave. There was hardly a dissenting voice in the 
general approval of the departure of the unspeak- 
able Turks. They had been taking from the towns- 
people for months to feed and supply the troops, 
and it had become absolute brigandage during the 
last weeks. Not only supplies, but men also, were 
pressed into the service. The order was expected 
from Constantinople which would press into the 
service of the Turks every man and boy within 
reach. All and more would be needed to stop the 
British. What if they were not Turks'? They 
would have to fight for them just the same. For- 
tunately the order did not arrive until too late. 
The British were coming and there was no time 



196 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

to train fresh troops to stop them. For the Bag- 
daddies everything was to be gained and nothing 
to be lost by getting rid of Turkish ^^ protection.'^ 

By evening the British were a few miles from 
the city and the Turks were ready to leave. The 
Turkish troops were coming up past the city in 
their retreat. The officers in Bagdad were piling 
their luggage on the last train to pull out and take 
them to safety. Finally, in the night, there was a 
great whistle, an engine chugged off slowly, then 
faster and faster. Bagdad heard the last of the 
Turks. They were gone forever. 

But there was something worse now, something 
which, unfortunately, few had foreseen. The 
Kurds, great strong men who had come from the 
land bordering Armenia, the riff-raff of Bagdad's 
slums, began to loot the city. Thousands of them 
rushed through the streets, through the bazaars 
and the narrow winding lanes of the town, ripping 
down a door here, a wall there, fighting for the 
goods in the houses and shops, piling their backs 
high with loot; then hurrying on to hide their 
illgotten gains that they might rush back for more. 
In every street they could be heard, hacking at 



THE ROUT OF THE TURKS 197 

doors, screaming, cutting one another, falling over 
each other, in their wild greed for gain. 

The townspeople were now terror-stricken. 
They had been terribly abused by the Turks, but 
even under them no such terror had been roused 
as by this awful riot of the Kurds. None of the 
people found any sleep as the havoc grew and 
grew in its intensity. If the British would only 
come they would stop it all! Why had they not 
followed the Turks right into the city! They 
were near enough, judging from the sound of the 
guns. The inhabitants had lived through the last 
day of Turkish rule expecting to see the British 
enter at any moment. They had thought the Brit- 
ish would prevent the looting by the Kurds. But 
it had come, and they were unprepared. The 
owners of the little shops in the bazaars, as they 
lay in their houses, saw visions of their goods 
spread broadcast in the streets or hidden in dirty 
hovels in the rottenest part of the city. The deal- 
ers in rugs, in jewelry, in fancy furniture saw in 
fancy their wares thrown in heaps by men who 
had no idea of their value; the rugs ripped 
and frayed, the jewelry broken to bits, as the 



198 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Kurds grabbed for the things and ripped them 
apart in their fighting, the furniture broken and 
torn as the great giants carried it through the 
streets on their backs, crashing up against each 
other, shoving and pulling, each one made in his 
eagerness to get the greatest share of loot. Ev- 
erything would be either gone or destroyed! 

Greater and greater grew the havoc, higher 
and higher the excitement, till the word came, 
''Emshe'' — ''get out/' For the British were 
coming at last. The noise gradually died down, 
the respectable citizens, one by one, came out of 
their houses, where they had spent a sleepless, 
anxious night. Some of the bazaar keepers came 
to see what had been left of their stock and to 
weep when they saw doors battered down and 
their few remaining possessions lying about in 
the dust. 

Slowly the streets filled with the townspeople, 
moving toward the gates to greet the victors. 
Some of the more desperate of the Kurds were 
still at their riotous work. The crowd of towns- 
people grew larger, more expectant, more excited. 



THE ROUT OF THE TUEKS 199 

They crowded together, pushing and pulling to 
get near the front to see what was happening. 

Their fears of the Turks and then of the Kurds 
had given place to a great rejoicing at the pros- 
pect of the British entry. All different races and 
religions were there, dressed in their finest gowns, 
to greet their new protectors, their saviors; the 
men, most of them in their red f ezzes or dark tur- 
bans and kerchiefs and their long girdled robes, 
the women in all their holiday finery, silk robes, 
lace veils, bracelets and fancy little slippers with 
pointed toes. They could hardly wait for the tri- 
umphal entry. 

Then came the troops. They got to the railway 
station, across the river from the city, just before 
seven o'clock. An advance guard entered the 
city and men were immediately stationed to keep 
order. Excitement was higher than ever now. 
The welcome was warm. The Bagdaddies lined 
the streets as the soldiers entered, and shouted 
and saluted enthusiastically in evidence of the 
good-will they felt. Every face was lifted in 
praise of the savior. No more would Turkish rule 
set tribe against tribe, race against race, to the ut- 



200 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

ter destruction of all order and hope. The Brit- 
ish had reaUy come. 

But no sooner had they come than they were 
gone. There was no stopping to have a good look 
at the city that England had fought for through 
two great campaigns. There was still work to be 
done. The Turks had to be driven far away — up 
into the hills, if necessary. Bagdad must not be 
lost again. Up the Diala and up the Tigris the 
British chased the Turks. Twenty miles away 
from their lost city they made a desperate attempt 
to stop. The British were worn out by the labor of 
chasing the enemy all the way from Kut. There 
had been weeks with little rest, and hours and 
hours with no water. But the spirit was just the 
same. Again they savagely attacked the Turks. 
The Black Watch, the famous Scottish regiment, 
moved on at top speed for two nights and a day 
after getting to Bagdad, its men still fighting 
hard. The Turks fell back farther and farther. 
Bagdad was forever safe. All that Townshend 
had fought and suffered for was won. Bagdad 
was a British protectorate, and the Turks were 
far away. 




British troops moving through a Bagdad street 




Indian troops entering Bagdad through a heavy dust 

storm 

{From a photograph by Mr. JVeir Stewart). 



THE ROUT OF THE TURKS 201 

While the troops were making Bagdad safe, I 
was a passenger on a paddle boat upon which sup- 
plies and fresh troops were being hurried up the 
winding river to the newly taken city. We were 
turning the last bend before the city just as the 
sun was rising. There, through the mist, we could 
see the shimmery City of the Caliphs. All that 
the wondrous tales of the *^ Arabian Nights" had 
told lay half concealed through that veiling mist. 
The domes and the minarets of the mosques so 
perfect in form, the clusters of palms, the fruit or- 
chards and the old wall to keep out the hordes of 
^* Infidels,'' all were there — the City of Golden 
Domes and the palace of Haroun-al-RascJiid. We 
steamed nearer, the mist cleared, and there was 
the tumbledown city of a Turkish Pasha, fallen 
from the grandeur of the Caliphate. Nearer still 
we moved, and now there was more to be seen: 
men swarming over the ridge to the north, im- 
proving defenses, cavalry riding off to recon- 
noiter, paddle boats in the river, camps in the 
palms, and everywhere British flags. It was the 
British city of Bagdad. 

We anchored in midstream, not far from the 



202 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 



first buildings of the city. As we lay there quietly, 
thinking of Bagdad and all it meant, there was a 
distant rumble of guns. Ah! Bagdad was safe. 
It seemed to come to reassure us as we arrived at 




The British city of Bagdad. 

the city that had cost so much to take. It would 
not be lost again. 

On the west bank there were palm groves for 
miles, and in them the camps of the Tommies. 
Not far up the river was the camp of the Scotch- 
men, with their kilties. Weary and worn, they 



THE EOUT OF THE TURKS 203 

I were back in camp while others were doing their 
I part in chasing the Turks. During the first 
r twenty-one days of the rout of the Turks, the 
' Black Watch had marched a hundred and sixty 
I miles through the dust and had fought three de- 
i| cisive battles. Indeed they had done their bit. 
I Now they could get a glimpse of the city that they 
i had helped so much to take and to make safe. 
I But now that they were there, what did they 
j seel Luxurious, gaudy, mystic Bagdad? — city of 
! golden domes, of genii, Aladdin, All Baha, Sind- 
had? No, not this. Just a Mesopotamian objec- 
tive, a mud town with its dust and heat. But 
what of that? Those men, who fought for it, 
would not have been stirred if Bagdad had still 
been the glorious city of gold. In their tired state 
there was no room for thoughts of such things. 
One thing they knew. They had had to fight like 
mad to take the place and now it was theirs. They 
were glad — that they had done their bit. Noth- 
, ing else stirred them. They little thought of the 
Bagdad of story. Nothing on earth or in fairy- 
land made any difference if only they could say 
^^Wewon!" 



204 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Would that Townshend could have seen them 
there, triumphant but not boastful, glad but not 
conceited, proud but silent. I hope it was not long 
before the news reached his prison island in the 
Bosphorus, that he might rejoice with the world 
that Bagdad was wrested from the Turks and join 
with the world in the hearty thanksgiving that 
the march of the British to Bagdad was now nobly- 
completed. 

For England Townshend had made the doomed 
drive for Bagdad. For England he had suffered in 
the heartbreaking, losing fight against starvation. 
Maude, living and working in the wretched cli- 
mate of Mesopotamia, his health failing till he 
faced death, fought and won, that Townshend 
should not have suffered in vain. 

Townshend suffered for England. Maude suf- 
fered but won for Townshend and England. Bag- 
dad was British. 



CHAPTER XI 

BAGDAD, THE BRITISH PRIZE 

OuK boat lay in midstream while the skipper 
whistled for space along the bank. A dozen or so 
paddle boats, wedged up against one another 
along the shore, were unloading supplies on the 
high river bank. Armies of coolies were swarm- 
ing over the boats, the barges and the shore, 
marching back and forth between the boats and 
the shore over long springy gangplanks, piling 
boxes, bags, wood, oil-tins, ammunition, equip- 
ment, everything in great pyramids behind the 
bank and the bund. The new city had to have 
many things and in a hurry. The city was just 
changing hands. And Bagdad is far from Busra, 
and Busra far from England. 

A month ago that bank was covered with Turk- 
ish supplies, on their way down the river to their 
front. Three weeks ago these supplies were dis- 
appearing as the rout from Kut came near Bag- 

205 



206 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

dad. Two weeks ago the last of tlie Turks were 
gone. Now here were the stores of the British 
army, piled up as though the place had always 
been used as their storehouse. Behold the cap- 
tured city! What had been was no more. **An 
army moves on its stomach. ' ' Here was the great 
new base of supplies and the armies were pro- 
ceeding north, east and west, like a fan. 

We heard a faint rumbling of guns. They 
seemed to come from off to the east. The troops 
marching along the Diala were fighting back the 
Turks. 

The boat was snuggling into the bank. It was 
midday and hot and dusty. I walked over the 
barge we were towing at the side, up to the bank, 
and then made along the high bund, for Bagdad, 
its great domes three miles upstream. More than 
a place for a base had been conquered. The city 
itself lay just around a bend in the river. In the 
early morning, on the way up the river, I had seen 
it in the distance, before the palms along the 
winding shore concealed it from view. I won- 
dered what the place would be like at close range. 

I heard the distant whirring of an airplane. 



BAGDAD, THE BRITISH PRIZE 207 

I 

I There were some explosions, but all from the 

direction of the desert — ^no harm done. Then 
quiet. A Turkish machine was flying high and 
toward the north. A few white patches of smoke 
in the air showed that Archie, the British anti- 
aircraft gun, was faithfully at his work. 

I was getting nearer the city and could plainly 
see the first buildings along the river front, their 
flat roofs, their courtyards opening on the rivei* 
wall, and the boats in the river under the windows. 
il got to the pontoon bridge. It was not the 
famous old Turkish bridge with all the star and 
crescent flags on it, but the new British bridge 
that curved across the stream just below the city. 
"When halfway across it I could see the whole city. 
What a metropolis it appeared ! It was the great 
captured city. Not many days ago it had been a 
city of the Turks. The motor trucks from Ger- 
many had come racing to the city and from there 
to the troops fighting against the Cossacks in 
Persia and to the troops fighting against the 
British on the Tigris. The great caravans from 
Asia Minor and from Persia had come rumbling 
through the city. Bagdad had distributed the 



208 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

wealth of the great grain and wool regions lying 
to the east and to the north. For the Turks Bag- 
dad had been the metropolis- of Mesopotamia. 
Only Mosul, far to the north, could hold a candle 
to it. All the towns on the Tigris and Euphrates 
were mere suburbs to the great metropolis. The 
trade routes from Syria entered there. The trade 
routes from Kermanshah entered there. Bagdad 
was indeed the key to the East. I felt as though 
I were coming from a country home in America 
back to the city. There is always a shock about 
that. But what a shock when the city was Bag- 
dad ! The great Caliphate ! Bagdad ! Surely no 
other city in the world has had such a place in 
story. It was a place of genii. 

At the center of the water front of the city 
were some large buildings, evidently the places of 
state. In the river, lying against the wall of one 
of these, were two British monitors, sentinels at 
the gate of British Bagdad. Over the tops of the 
buildings I could see the minarets of the Moslem 
mosques, and here and there along the river some 
British flags. The Arabs now might come to their 



BAGDAD, THE BRITISH PRIZE 209 

own under British protection. The Turks were 
gone. 

As I walked up the bank on the city side of 
the river my opinion of the Arabs began to rise. 
There were Arabs there who seemed to have an 
idea of progress. There was hope. Instead of 
dropping the water for their canals over the 
bank by swinging a little basket back and forth 
over the water they were really doing something. 
One lively Arab had erected a chain of pails to 
hang over the river wall and had a cog-wheel 
arranged so that a horse could walk round and 
round and turn it to haul up water for the crops. 
Another had piloted an oil engine as far away 
from the mechanical part of the world as Bag- 
dad and was running a little mill on the river 
bank, with oil brought to Bagdad by the British 
army. There were good crops in the fields and 
the farmers seemed to be real men, not just 
'* plundering Arabs.'' Arab boys in rowboats on 
the river asked to take me to Bagdad, calling out 
'* Backsheesh! Backsheesh!'' Their boats were 
not the old, stone-age ballams of the southern 
country, but modern round-bottomed rowboats. 



210 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

These were signs of progress. I thought of the 
progress possible now under British rule instead 
of Turkish. I thought of what England had done 
for India and Egypt. I thought — but my reveries 
were stopped by a most unexpected sight. I had 
seen flags flying over the city as I came up. Now 
I saw one close at hand. It was not the Union 
Jack but the Stars and Stripes. I thought I must 
be dreaming, that the sudden change of the city 
of the ^^ Arabian Nights'^ from Turkish rule to 
British protection had been too much, that the 
contrasts had set my mind to visions of still an- 
other country. But no — there it was, flying in the 
breeze over one of the largest of the buildings. 
I hastened my step considerably. I had not seen 
an American flag flying since I became part of 
the British Expeditionary Force in Mesopotamia. 
What a jumble of thoughts now! Ali Baba, flags, 
golden mosques, unspeakable Turks, war, Amer- 
ica, England, chaos, order — I was making at top 
speed for the building with the flag when I was 
abruptly stopped by a sentry standing in the 
gateway that led iuto the main road of the city. 
**Got a passT' he said. ^*No one allowed in the 



BAGDAD, THE BEITISH PRIZE 211 

city unarmed.*' I came to earth with a thud. 
There were no more visions and thoughts. Here 
was a fact. The British were masters of Bagdad. 
It would do me no good to be first cousin to Sind- 
had the Sailor or head of the Steel Trust in 
America. Here was a British soldier with the 
muzzle of his rifle not far away. I stopped short. 
I had neither pass nor gun. Luckily one of the 
sentries had at one time been wounded and in 
hospital where I had done something for him, and 
he knew me. After a few words of advice to me 
about getting a pass, the sentry raised his gun. 
Evidently the British meant to show the native 
population that there would be no trouble in the 
city while they were running it. Every man on 
the street had his rifle and bayonet. 

I started up the street that ran along parallel 
to the river, a hundred yards or so from it. On 
the side toward the river stood the building with 
the flag. I ran up the brick steps. Over the big 
door was a seal with a spread eagle, some stripes, 
and the word * * Consulate. * ' Just inside the door 
were sitting several fat, dark-skinned persons 
with big, important-looking mustaches, all 



212 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

dressed up in uniforms with frills, but they 
couldn't speak English. They all saluted most re- 
spectfully but seemed a little hesitant. I imagine 
that they had not become so accustomed to their 
new protectors in British khaki as to know 
whether I was a cook or a general. I wrote my 
name and why I was there on a piece of paper and 
one of the fat persons in uniform disappeared 
with it behind a heavy curtain. In another mo- 
ment he was back again, all smiles and bows, 
and saying all sorts of things in Turkish. I took 
them to be polite. It was easy to see he meant 
me to go to the second floor, however, so I obeyed 
and found myself on a balcony running all the way 
around a square, roofless court. All around the 
balcony were the doors and windows of the second- 
story rooms. The uniformed servant, ^^Cavas'' as 
I learned he was called, bowed in the direction 
of one of the rooms, and I entered to find the con- 
sul standing with a smiling face and a warm hand- 
shake waiting for me, ready to reciprocate my 
happiness at seeing a fellow American in the far- 
off city of Bagdad and to answer my string of 
questions. 



BAGDAD, THE BRITISH PEIZE 213 

No, lie had not been in Bagdad a long while, 
only a few months. Only since the previous 
consul died there of cholera. Yes, he had seen all 
the last excitement of the Turkish losses and had 
heard the guns approach. He had a rather ner- 
vous night while the Kurds were looting the city. 
Everyone was glad that the British had come. 
It would make a tremendous difference. No, he 
did not know anything definite about America's 
relations with Germany. There had been a report 
about unofficial war. He expected that it would 
be official before very long. There had been more 
sinking of ships. A fine building, one of the big- 
gest in Bagdad, had been requisitioned for the 
Y. M. C. A. and my new home and new work would 
be very large. 

Mr. Heyser, for that was the American Con- 
suPs name, was most kind, hoped he could see 
me often, and sent his head Cavas with me to show 
me my new quarters. There was a good deal of 
state authority in the person of the Cavas, He 
wore on his hat a very handsome shield of stars 
and stripes, had fancy epaulets on his shoulders, 
and carried a sword. The Tommies stared at us 



214 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

as we passed. Never had there been anything 
like the Cavas anywhere else in the country. 
They thought Bagdad must be a remarkable place, 
with all sorts of surprises. They were right, as 
we shall see. 

We passed many fruit groves and many build- 
ings on the way up the wide dusty street. One 
of the buildings was the one I had seen with the 
gunboats against it. It was evidently the Head- 
quarters of the General Staff, the G. H. Q. There 
were residences also, with no windows on the first 
floor, and on the second floor window-seats that 
projected over the road. Some of these window- 
seats were very wide and gave enough shade for 
the passer-by to walk in. Other buildings were 
shops; some with oranges for sale, some with 
souvenirs. The Arabs were already at work 
passing off old Turkish trinkets that they did not 
want to Britishers who would pay large prices for 
things that had been Turkish. They had Turkish 
watches galore, and Turkish spoons, and Turk- 
ish belt buckles, and Turkish coffee pots, and 
Turkish harem vanity cases, and Turkish fezzes 



BAGDAD, THE BEITISH PEIZE 215 

and every conceivable thing that any Turk would 
ever have. 

There were some girls in the street, all with 
veils so that their eyes could not be seen. They 
did not cover their mouths like the Mohammedans, 
so they must have been Jewesses or Christians. 
Instead they wore veils just over their eyes or a 
stiff sort of board like a blinder which allowed 
them to see the ground but did not allow their 
eyes to meet those of a passer-by. It was good to 
see a few white people of the country. Their long 
silk robes or ^^ abbas/' as the Cavas called them, 
were very beautiful, most of them a delicate pink 
or light blue. They had most artistic bracelets 
on their arms also. They seemed timid in the 
presence of the British soldiers with their guns. 
I imagine the thoughts of their awful treatment 
by the Turks were still so fresh they could not 
bear to see even British soldiers. 

Most of the men in the street had on European 
clothes and red fezzes. The Cavas said most were 
Jews, some Armenians, a few of other sects. The 
Arabs, Mohammedans, in the streets all had on 
their long robes and their curious headdress. 



216 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

There seemed to be no way of separating the 
people but by their religions, there were so many 
different kinds. Races did not seem to count for 
very much. 

We finally arrived at the building. It was in- 
deed a big affair. It was at least a hundred feet 
long along the street, and when I got inside I 
found that the two big courts reached right out 
to the river front. In the second court were sev- 
eral blossoming trees and some gardens. To the 
right of the court was a big dining-room, for the 
building had been a fine hotel under the Turks. 

In the dining-room and in the court near the 
river were sitting Tommies, talking and looking 
out of the windows and over the railing into the 
river and across it to the buildings on the other 
bank. On the river, boats of all sorts were ply- 
ing hither and thither, from the Arab rowboats 
to the fast motorboats of the Army Headquarters 
and Flying Corps. The sun was bright and every- 
thing glistened and sparkled. Even the muddy 
river looked blue. It seemed like Venice now, 
with the white buildings along the river banks 
and the boats paddling on the blue water. 



BAGDAD, THE BRITISH PRIZE 217 

Across the river, almost opposite, were things 
that looked like smashed machinery. An errand 
to that part of the town soon gave me a chance to 
see what it was. Smashed machinery it was in- 
deed, the smashed machinery of the Kaiser. 
There lay in ruins the Bagdad part of the Bag- 
dad Railway scheme. In the excitement of enter- 
ing the illustrious city that had just changed 
hands I had forgotten there was something about 
Bagdad bigger than its position as the Turkish 
metropolis, bigger than the pipe-dreams of the 
tellers of tales which have come to us as the 
** Arabian Nights." Bagdad was the central fig- 
ure in the great plan of German conquest of the 
East. The road from Berlin to Bagdad was to 
be the great white road of trade that was to 
accomplish for Germany her dream of expansion 
eastward. The road was certainly being built. 
There were plenty of remains right in front of me. 
Why did the Kaiser kill the goose that was to lay 
the golden eggl Why bring war when he might 
have sent his trade over the Bagdad Railway to 
draw all the East to him? Now the Bagdad end 
was gone. 



218 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

The Germans had done a lot of hard work on 
the road. There stood the great stone and cement 
buildings, offices of the German Railway Com- 
pany, the railroad station and the immense wire- 
less plant. For these the Germans had brought 
all the stone for miles and miles from the hills of 
Asia Minor or of Persia, for there is not so much 
as a pebble in Mesopotamia. There stood near 
the river the stone-crusher that had crushed the 
stone that made the roadbeds. In the ruins of 
machinery that lay all around on the ground the 
stone-crusher stood unharmed. The Germans had 
realized that the British could get no stone for it, 
so it would be only an aggravation. On the 
ground lay the crumpled-up standard of a great 
reservoir, with the big tank, all bent, lying near. 
There were boilers and countless parts of machin- 
ery lying everywhere, all smashed or bent by 
explosives. A little farther from the river lay 
several locomotives, but all of them useless with 
parts destroyed. Some of the trucks were there 
also, in the same useless condition. I noticed that 
each of them had on it the stamp of a star and 
crescent and the word ^^ Bagdad." The Sultan 



BAGDAD, THE BRITISH PRIZE 219 

was to believe that the road was his, or perhaps 
would be his some day if he could ever pay his 
debts to Germany. The railway station also had 
on it in big letters the word ^^ Bagdad,^' in Eng- 
lish and in Turkish, tactfully not in German. 
Lastly there was the great German wireless sta- 
tion, a tremendous stone structure with part of 
the stone base of the wireless tower still standing. 
The iron part lay bent to pieces, fallen through 
the roof of the building. The great tower had 
stood just long enough to send to Germany the 
news that Bagdad must fall and then crashed 
through the roof, dynamited by German en- 
gineers. That was the end of the Bagdad part of 
the great German scheme 

The tremendous amount of destruction done by 
the Germans on their own property, the fearful 
loss of good materials that might have been used 
for peaceful enterprise, was appalling. All Asia, 
all the world would have profited by a railway 
through Mesopotamia, a quick route to the east, 
London to Karachi, or Hamburg to the Persian 
Gulf in a week. Would that the railway of the 
Germans had been planned to help the world, in- 



220 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

stead of to destroy! As it was, it deserved the 
fate imposed upon it by its own engineers. 

Before the war there was little talk by Germany 
about the military value of her railway. She 
thought she could camouflage that by always talk- 
ing of trade, trade, trade. But when her armies 
swept over Roumania, and the route from Berlin 
to Asia Minor was safe to Germany, the spokes- 
man of the Kaiser, Dr. Rohrbach, said: ^'The 
Bagdad Railway would supplement the Syrian 
and Arabian railways in throwing troops in the 
direction of Egypt. The Bagdad Railway is thus 
in the nature of a political life insurance policy 
for Germany. '^ He might have added India to 
Egypt and got nearer to the whole truth that lay 
behind the railway project. Think of the audac- 
ity! Proclaiming the road to be a life insurance 
policy for Germany, an insurance that Germany 
should gain life by spreading out to take all the 
world in her greedy paws and devour it ! 

At the present writing, we are glad because of 
the fall of Jerusalem to an army similar to that 
in Bagdad, not only from the religious point of 
view but from the standpoint of the loss to Ger- 



BAGDAD, THE BEITISH PRIZE 221 

many. It is a time for great rejoicing-, for the 
British push through Palestine has not only- 
ruined the plans of Germany for getting into 
Egypt on rails, but has brought greater security 
to the splendid results in Bagdad. With a big 
British force in Palestine there will be no advance 
from Aleppo on Bagdad, to try to get back that 
important place. From my experience with the 
British army I am quite convinced that the Ger- 
mans could never defeat the British in Meso- 
potamia anyway, but there would be a great 
tussle, and the army in Jerusalem has prevented 
that. At the same time it must be remembered 
that the advance of the British in Mesopotamia 
to Bagdad did the great service of relieving the 
pressure of the Turks against the British in 
Palestine, that great victories might be won there. 
The two campaigns have always gone hand in 
hand. One common result now they have accom- 
plished, the destruction of the power of Prussian- 
ism on rails to the east. 

To the Tommies in Bagdad the expulsion of the 
Germans was a great event, though they may not 
have realized its full significance. "What inter- 



222 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

ested them was to be able to write tbeir names in 
a German building. The troops in France conld 
not do that. They never got on soil that had been 
German before the war. Here the Tommies felt 
superior to their brothers on the western front. 
They were in German territory, for all the terri- 
tory of the railway was German. On the walls of 
the wireless station were the penciled names of 
thousands of Tommies who could say some day, 
* *We were in Germany right enough. ' ' One bright 
Tommy wrote on the wall, ^ ^ Berlin next. ' ^ 

But there were messages from Germans as well. 
Painted in huge red letters on the walls of the big 
central room were the messages '^Gott strafe 
England/^ and ^^Six Tommies equal one Ger- 
man,'' and ^^ England shall die." In the very 
color of the paint there was hatred. There were 
pictures too. One represented London, with its 
tall buildings close together and an immense Zep- 
pelin over it, dropping bombs. Another repre- 
sented a big English boat on the sea and a sub- 
marine blowing it up. The painting was well 
done. Some German had evidently taken a lot 
of trouble to tell the British what he hoped. 



BAGDAD, THE BKITISH PRIZE 223 

Just beside the building" stood a British anti- 
aircraft gun, an assurance that what he hoped 
would never be. A large camp of infantry was 
in the palms not far away. Several companies 
were drilling. 



CHAPTER XII 

TOMMY IN BAGDAD 

Tommy in Bagdad! Camel Caravans in New 
York ! Bagdad Railway ! Bagdad War ! Bagdad 
Tommy! It had to come. But imagine Tommy 
Atkins mixing among tlie Eastern multitudes 
thronging the streets of Bagdad, taking the place 
of the bodyguard of Haroun-al-Raschid! Tommy 
in a French town is conceivable. There, he soon 
becomes accustomed to things. But East is East 
and West is West and this was never more true 
than in the old city of Bagdad. 

Why, you say, is Bagdad any different from 
any other Eastern city? Tommy got along all 
right in Cairo or Bombay. But Bagdad is the 
city of the Bagdaddies. The Tommies were in 
Bagdad — ^but not of it. Never did any of us 
feel that we belonged there, nor did we have any 
idea that the Bagdaddies thought we belonged 
there. We were all misfits. We thought at the 

224 



TOMMY IN BAGDAD 225 

very first that Bagdad would follow along the way 
of Bombay and Cairo and also become somewhat 
Anglicized. But we were mistaken. Bagdad 
stayed Bagdaddie. 

It is not so easy to explain what I mean by that, 
though it sticks out all over the place. I have 
already called Bagdad a metropolis. It is to 
Mesopotamia and a good part of Persia what New 
York is to the Eastern States. One always knows 
a New Yorker. After a man has lived in the great 
metropolis for a while he becomes welded into the 
type. A New Yorker may be an Upstater, or a 
Westerner, or a Southerner, or just a New Yorker 
since the days of Peter Stuyvesant. A Bagdaddie 
is an Arab Mohammedan, or a Kurd Mohamme- 
dan, or a neo-Turk Mohammedan, or a Persian 
Mohammedan, or a Jew, or a Christian, either 
Nestorian, Syrian, Sabean or Armenian. It is al- 
ways religion, religion, religion. You never get 
away from it. It is all that makes any difference, 
all that separates the people. But there is an air 
about the man of a metropolis that is unmistak- 
able. He is of The City. All good things come 



226 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

to The City. You must pay for the privilege of 
belonging to The City. But it is worth it. 

Some up-and-doing people have such modern 
improvements as sewing-machines, ice-boxes, 
small oil engines and the like. Eunning from Bag- 
dad to the great Shiah shrine at Kazimain is a 
horse car, with seats on the roof as well as in- 
side. These are signs of life, and it would seem 
as though East and West were meeting. But not 
so. The East has taken a few things from the 
West, that is all. In Bagdad East is East. 

The Bagdaddies surely realized we were mis- 
fits. One thing they very soon found out. That 
was that Tommy and his money are soon parted. 
Active service always tends to decrease one's es- 
teem of money. Life itself is at stake and the new 
scale of values that grows up with that as a pre- 
mise places money far down the list. Besides, on 
active service there is usually nothing to buy. We 
all felt like blowing in a tremendous amount of 
money in Bagdad, just because we could. As 
easily as our money went out prices went up. 
One morning I passed a shop where some Tom- 
mies were arguing with a vender for a brass 



TOMMY IN BAGDAD 227 

Turkish buckle, in the design of a star and cres- 
cent. The Arab ^ ' bazaar-walla" wanted about ten 
times too much. The men crowded around the 
box-shaped shop and clamored for different 
prices. The old Arab's face was impassive. His 
keen eyes and the roll of wool wound like a ser- 
pent around his head, as though it were in keep- 
ing with his thoughts, looked devilish. He let 
them argue. Then he put the buckle in a box and 
turned to something else, mumbling in Arabic. 
The men moved away, mumbling in a sort of Eng- 
lish, probably no more profane than the Arabic. 
A few minutes later I passed the place again. 
The Tommies were back and had bought the 
buckle. Their mumbling had grown to open 
charges of ^^ highway robbery. '^ The Arab still 
mumbled, but his face did not change. He was 
looking far away, lifting to his lips the end of 
the hose of his hubble-bubble pipe. I looked at 
the man as I walked past the shop. When I came 
to a bend in the road I turned to look again. He 
still had not moved and was stUl lazily puffing at 
his pipe, and looking far away. **East is East,'' 
I thought as I went my way. 



228 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

A little way down the road was the office of the 
Field Treasurer. For a hundred yards along the 
lane stretched a line of Arab women in their black 
gowns, holding English paper money in their 
hands, waiting their turn to exchange it for sil- 
ver. While the Arabs in the bazaars were tak- 
ing the new kind of money from the spendthrift 
Tommies they were sending their women to make 
sure that they could hear their money clink in- 
stead of rustle. 

Throughout Bagdad the Englishman sets him- 
self up in broad contrast to the Oriental. So dif- 
ferent are the oriental and occidental points of 
view that it was a case of Tommy against Bag- 
daddie everywhere. It was the dull khaki against 
the lurid color and noise of the Orient. It was 
the plain uniforms against the flowing robes of 
the Bagdaddie men, and the beautiful ^'ahhas'* 
of the Christian and Jewish girls. There were, 
in Bagdad, a few women who wore European 
dress. They were as out of place with European 
dress in Bagdad as women with bare feet and 
scarfs wound around their bodies would be in 



TOMMY IN BAGDAD 229 

American streets. The rich-colored gowns of the 
native girls were beautiful. 

One of the British divisions which marched to 
Bagdad was given as part of its property a com- 
pound containing a huge grove of pomegranate 
and orange trees. It was indeed singular to see 
Tommies in their khaki strolling around among 
the blossoms and the first fruits of these beauti- 
ful trees, sipping tea in the shade of trees whose 
names savor of fairyland. 

Some of the alert Bagdaddies started little eat- 
ing shops for the British soldiers, where they 
might get soda water, oranges and cakes, at ex- 
orbitant prices. Sitting in one of these one day 
with some friends, I noticed that just across the 
street was an Arab coffee shop. While we sat on 
chairs, and at tables, hundreds of Bagdaddie men 
were reclining on their wide wooden benches, like 
the old benches from which people used to eat 
thousands of years ago. Each man had his hub- 
ble-bubble pipe and was intermittently taking 
long puffs of the wretched tobacco that they smoke 
in those pipes. In our shop we were smoking 
English-made cigarettes. Across the street an 



230 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Arab walked along in front of the benches that 
lined the street, clinked some cups and his copper 
coffee-pot, and poured out for each man a very 
small amount of the rich, syrupy coffee. Those 
of the Bagdaddies who were not drinking coffee 
were drinking lebhen, Lebhen is curdled camePs 
milk, and makes a most delightful drink for hot 
weather — not cold but refreshing. In our shop 
we were noiselessly pouring out bad-tasting soda, 
made without all the proper ingredients. Across 
the street they were eating manna, '^ angel food." 
The Bagdaddies say it is what the Israelites ate 
in the wilderness on the journey from Egypt to 
Palestine. It may be so, for the manna of Bag- 
dad is picked up off the ground or off the leaves 
of trees. It comes from the bark of certain hill 
trees and the Arab women go out and scrape it off 
the leaves or off the stones and send it down to 
Bagdad, where it is prepared with nuts and made 
into a kind of nut taffy. It is very good, too. But 
we were eating hard, underbaked cakes, or at- 
tempts at cakes. I think we would have fared 
better in the Arab coffee house, on the whole. 
We fared better where we were in the matter 



TOMMY IN BAGDAD 231 

of smokes, however. Never did I see such ciga- 
rettes as the Arabs make. They put the tobacco 
into a big bowl, chop it with knives and moisten it 
with their tongues till they have a mass of finely 
cut, wet tobacco. Then they take coarse paper 
and roll the tobacco into cigarettes about four 
inches long. The cigarettes do not taste so bad, 
but the small bits of tobacco always fall out and 
burn your clothes. One of my friends opened up 
one of the cigarettes and found that the paper 
was from the cover of an English magazine. The 
Arabs had been so hard up for paper that they had 
made for the first thing they could find when the 
British entered Bagdad. 

The contrast between the surging crowds of 
Bagdaddies and the parades of British soldiers 
was most marked. In the early morning the great 
crowds of Arab coolies or hamals rushed through 
the streets in search of work. There usually was 
work because there was a great deal of unloading 
and loading to do at the boats of the British as 
they brought things up to the new British base. 
The great *^ multitudes'' actually poured through 
the narrow alleyways, under the projecting bal- 



232 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

conies of the houses on each side of the streets. 
About half-past five every morning we heard them 
start on their search for work. "We could hear 
their voices in the far distance, and at first 
thought there must be a riot somewhere in the 
city. Then it came nearer and it was almost 
deafening. It was like an alarm clock for every- 
one who was trying to sleep anywhere near the 
route of the crowds. Usually they ran and 
shouted ; sometimes they walked and sang a weird 
sort of song, the same monotonous phrase over 
and over, the kind of song they used when work- 
ing, making the work rhythmical and singing to 
keep time. 

It was very convenient to have such throngs of 
coolies in the streets, for in the early morning all 
one need do to get an army of workers was to call 
out the window ^'Hamal!" and they would come 
into the courtyard till there was no more room. 
It reminds one of the genii of Aladdin, who so 
mysteriously did all his work. Only say the magic 
word ^^Hamal/^ and the work is done. When a 
fatigue party went through the streets or a guard 
party or a detachment of troops on way to camp 



TOMMY IN BAGDAD 233 

the ^* multitude'' sank into oblivion. **We" were 
the caste. The ^^ rabble'' must stay in the back- 
ground. When the work required carriers the 
Arabs were superior, for on their strong backs 
they could carry almost any burdens. But not 
when artisans were needed. Some of the carpen- 
try work in town was done by Arab carpenters 
who used tools that Jonah might have used. For 
boring, each carpenter had a spike with a wooden 
swivel and a string. Only by using his toes, both 
hands, and his chin could he manipulate the mar- 
velous implement, pull the string back and forth, 
and turn the spike so that it would bore. It was 
rather clever but not very speedy. 

The copper workers in the bazaar were also in- 
teresting. They hammered furiously at their work 
all day long, bending over it in the subdued glow 
of their forges. They were picturesque and their 
vessels were well made. But what a contrast to 
the mechanics of the Inland Water Transport 
Workshop, working on engine parts and on boat 
parts ! Here was a machine shop sent from Lon- 
don. 

The cavalry of the British and of the Arabs 



234 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH | 

were also typical of the difference between East 
and West. We think of cavalry with fine big 
horses and spurs and leather leggings, and a gen- 
eral appearance of strength and power. So it is 
with the British cavalry. We think of the Arab 
horsemen also as big and strong and on big horses. 
As a matter of fact the Arab horses are very 
small, though fast, and the Arabs are far from 
wearing spurs and leather leggings and looking 
extremely powerful. They remind one of the ^| 
Arab of story. The large men, with flowing robes 
covering the backs of the little ponies, sit with 
their legs stretched out from the sides of the ani- 
mals, their bare feet thrust into broad copper or 
iron stirrups wide and long enough to give support 
to the whole flat of the foot. The Arab of the 
** Arabian Nights,'' with his great turban, his 
twirling mustache, his long curved sword stuck 
through a most wonderfully colored sash, great 
bulging pantaloons and red, pointed slippers with 
toes sticking straight up, is found only partially 
in the Arab horseman of today, yet there is 
enough still in his picturesque appearance to make 
one realize that Bagdad is the great city of re- 



TOMMY IN BAGDAD 235 

nown. A fine, powerful looking Arab in flowing 
robes rode by me in the bazaar one day. How 
odd ! Yet be blended witb the background of Bag- 
dad; we did not. 

Bagdad bad another peculiarity — dust storms. 
During the first days of British occupation there 
were terrific storms. The paddle boats, as they 
steamed up the river bringing stores, blew their 
fog-horns all the while. The dust was thicker 
than fog. It was impossible to see more than fif- 
teen feet ahead, and terribly painful to keep the 
eyes open at all. Ashore the only way to walk was 
to take a quick look at the path and then close the 
eyes and go as far as you dared in the dark. The 
troops had to march miles in that sort of weather. 
Some of the troops entered the city in such a 
storm. I was working out of doors in such 
weather one day. It was the worst dust storm 
I ever encountered. Boats in the river broke 
adrift. All those that were trying to get some- 
where had to stop and tie up at the bank. It got 
so bad after a while that in order to walk I had 
to fairly throw myself against the wall of thick 
dust, plunge through it for a while, then stop and 



236 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

repair casualties enough so I could open my eyes 
and get an idea where I was going. 

On such a day as that I was talking to a Tommy 
in the bazaar section of the town, where every- 
thing was gloomy-looking from the effects of the 
looting of the Kurds: doors off here, goods de- 
stroyed there; everything looking forlorn and 
whatever there was to be seen covered with a 
coat of dust an eighth of an inch thick. ** Strike 
me pink,'' he said. ^^We might 'a' better stayed 
'ome in London an' left the dust to the Turks.'' 
Surely it seemed as though he were right. What 
was there in Bagdad anyway but dust and filth? 
Surely somebody was mistaken if he thought that 
was worth taking. 

As I walked through the residence part of the 
city I thought that Bagdad's buildings were in 
keeping with the dust that flew around. It was 
dust to dust returning. For the Bagdad houses 
are all built of mud baked into bricks, with just 
enough wood to keep the bricks together — either 
trunks of palm trees or beams of mulberry. The 
outside of a Bagdad building presents a most 
barren appearance at all times, but especially 



TOMMY IN BAGDAD 237 

when the dust is flying around, for there are no 
windows on the first floor and the doors are heavy, 
forbidding-looking black barriers with rusty cres- 
cent knockers. The upper story is a little more 
inviting, for there is always a balcony project- 
ing out over the street. It is impolite to look up 
at the windows of the balcony from the street, 
though they are excellent places from which the 
Bagdaddies may see all that goes on in the streets. 
If the house is on the river the balcony projects 
over the water and callers who come by boat can 
be seen long before they get to the river steps. 
I entered the residence of a wealthy Armenian 
Bagdaddie and breathed a sigh of relief as I 
looked at the courtyard. It was a new world. In- 
stead of thick dust there were brilliant rugs hang- 
ing from the balcony that ran around the court. 
There were flower gardens in the floor of the 
court and beautiful furniture on the balconies 
and pictures on the walls. It was Bagdad at its 
best. 

So passed the days that followed the dust storm. 
In the sunlight the bazaars looked most elegant, 
the torn-down doors and closed shops were over- 



238 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

looked in the brilliancy of the wares that the 
venders had for sale in the shops that were open. 
It was far from homelike. It was truly oriental 
and likely to remain so forever, with the climate 
so different from that of the West and with the 
immense population of 140,000 Bagdaddies, the 
best that remain of the great Eastern races who 
are not likely to become at all occidental in their 
ways. We were walking on a stage in which we 
were misfits. But in the sunlight of the bright 
clear days we did not mind it. What if East is 
East and West is West? We were meeting there. 
But were we? No. Tommy and Bagdaddie were 
too different. Never — ^well, almost never — the 
twain .^.Uall meet. 



CHAPTEE Xni 

FROM TURKISH TO BRITISH 

Bkitish and Turks were not the first peoples 
to be having a *'show'' in the vicinity of Bagdad. 
That country has ever been a great battlefield, a 
stage on which have played the armies of empires. 
A feeling of awe came over me at the thought 
of living in a land so famous for the men and 
the armies that had crossed it, the great bat- 
tles that had been fought and the empires that had 
been established there. 

The great Arch of Ctesiphon which stood as a 
sentinel before Townshend's march to Bagdad is 
all that the Tigris has to show of the glories of 
that stage in the past. But there is more hidden 
beneath the covering of the dust of ages, piled 
up by the desert winds. The land of the two 
rivers was glorious in days gone by. The first 
empire of all prospered there when Nimrod built 
his great cities on the Tigris, north of the present 

239 



240 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

site of Bagdad. From the two rivers Abraham 
started on his travels toward the Mediterranean, 
to settle in Palestine. The shepherds of the plains 
with their flocks that I watched going off over the 
desert were reminders of the adventurer who 
founded the Hebrew race. 

The ruins of the palaces and temples of Nebu- 
chadnezzar were only thirty miles to the west, 
on the Euphrates. Babylon, once the most famous 
and most beautiful and most powerful city in the 
world lay there ; the city from which men learned 
to tell time, the city whose influence spread to 
all lands and to all races. On the stage with a 
scene of paradise the armies of Babylon and As- 
syria played the drama of empire conquest. The 
great armies of the Babylonians conquered the 
haughty Assyrians only to fall in their turn be- 
fore Cyrus, the Persian. The so-called ^^Tomb 
of Ezra'' on the Tigris below Amara made fresh 
the mission of the scribe from the King of Persia 
and the return of the captive Jews to Jerusalem, 
across the Arabian desert. While I was in Bag- 
dad, Jerusalem was still under Turkish rule, but 
we watched for the British army from Egypt to 



FEOM TURKISH TO BRITISH 241 

force its way up to it. Looking at them from Bag- 
dad, how near and how real all the places of the 
great past seemed ! 

We were in the realms we once learned about 
in Greek history, in the country where the armies 
of Alexander the Great fought against Persia for 
the goal of world conquest. Only a few miles 
south of Bagdad lay the ruins of Seleucia, the 
city which was to have been the capital of Alex- 
ander's Eastern Kingdom. The great arch and 
the buried ruins right across the river from Se- 
leucia told the story of the Parthians, the found- 
ers of Ctesiphon, and the conquerors of the Ro- 
man forces under Mark Antony. They told of 
the power of the Persian monarchs when the 
Romans were finally beaten from the land. 

And then Bagdad itself! What a part on the 
great world stage that had played ! Every evening 
we could see, either at the bank of the river or in 
the courts of the mosques of Bagdad, Arabs kneel- 
ing in prayer to Allah whose Prophet was Mo- 
hammed. The wonderful domes of mosques, the 
last vestige of the magnificence of the best days 
of Bagdad, told of the great days of the court of 



242 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Earoun-al-Raschid, the famous Caliph of the Mo- 
hammedan world. 

The Shiah Mosque with its golden domes, in 
Kazimain, part of the city of Bagdad, held in its 
sacred vaults the story of bloodshed and passion 
which followed the death of the martyr Ali. That 
death was celebrated in Busra while the British 
army was getting ready to advance to Bagdad. 
At the death of Ali and Husein the government 
of the Mohammedan world went, under the Sunni 
or Omiad sect, to Palestine, but there it was short- 
lived and returned to Mesopotamia. With the 
help of the Persians, who were Shiahs, the Abbi- 
sid rule was set up and there grew up the great 
Bagdad that every reader knows through the 
^* Arabian Nights. '' The city was founded as the 
Mohammedan Caliphate in the year 762. It was 
then across the river from the Bagdad of to-day. 
Bagdad in those days was the center of every- 
thing — of trade, of manufacture, of education, of 
court influence; the place from which went all 
learning, all art, all inspiration. It was in the 
very center of a wonderfully fertile region. Since 
the Euphrates is twenty-five feet higher than the 



FEOM TUEKISH TO BEITISH 243 

Tigris there, irrigation courses flowed from one 
to tlie other through the Bagdad region, making 
of it a glorious garden of grain and fruit. The 
city of Mansur was built in a circle with three 
tremendous walls, one around the other, the 
middle one ninety feet high. Five of the gates 
which led from one wall to another were called 
the work of genii, built at the command of King 
Solomon. Bagdad drew all the great teachers, 
merchants, princes and priests of the world. 
From its colleges went out the teachings and lit- 
erary works that have transformed the thought 
of the whole world. The most famous and the 
most prosperous of cities it remained for three 
centuries. Then with internal trouble it began to 
wane. 

Gradually the decline of the great East began. 
Then came the Mongols, overrunning all the coun- 
tries of the East, who finished it. The Turks 
followed them and sealed it. All the great dams 
and embankments for the rivers were swept away ; 
the water spread over the whole land, and all the 
'*land between the rivers,'' the land of gardens 



244 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

and of splendor, became a country of swamps and 
plains with two insignificant streams. 

But the Turks were gone. The British had 
come. There was a new hope for Bagdad. The 
country that had once been more populous than 
Belgium and was now an arid waste might again 
rise to heights of prosperity. Sir William Wil- 
cox, the Englishman who has made such extensive 
investigations in Mesopotamia says that if the 
Tigris and Euphrates are again taken under con- 
trol, the eight inches of rainfall utilized and 
proper irrigation afforded, there can be immense 
crops of wheat, barley and beans in winter, and 
cotton, Indian com and rice in summer. Once 
more the land which under the Turks was a desert 
will be a paradise. The wars of the past from age 
to age brought Mesopotamia finally to desolation. 
The war of the present has brought hope of re- 
turn to glory. 

Every day brought assurance that the Turks 
were gone for good. One day a host of Turkish 
prisoners were marched through the town on their 
way down the river to prison camps. They were 
marched through the streets for exercise and for 



FEOM TUEKISH TO BRITISH 245 

the effect upon the townspeople. The Bagdaddies 
were to realize what the British had really done. 
In the artillery barracks there were British and 
Indian troops drilling in place of Turkish troops. 
Beside the old Persian gun in front of the build- 
ing stood British sentries. Inside the building 
was the Turkish small-arm factory, repaired for 
British use. In the rooms of the Serai, where the 
Turkish commanding officers had had their resi- 
dences and their offices, were the offices and rooms 
of the British officers. 

I was on my way to the camp in the palms north 
of Bagdad when I wandered into a blind alley 
and found myself in a compound filled with bat- 
tered junk of war. There were about a hundred 
guns, all Turkish, which were destroyed by their 
owners on the rout. They were in all sorts of con- 
ditions, some with broken wheels, some with the 
breech blocks removed, some with the magazine 
smashed. Next to them lay a dozen mines, also 
Turkish, the ones that the Turks laid in the river 
to halt the advance of the British gunboats. They 
halted their advance, but only long enough for the 



246 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

€rews to haul the mines on the decks of the Brit- 
ish boats. 

The Turks were forever gone. Nothing re- 
mained in Bagdad but captured Turkish soldiers 
and captured Turkish implements of war. 

The tact of the hotelkeepers, who were now 
taking care of British patrons instead of Turk- 
ish, was impressive. The names of the hotels 
changed remarkably. The hotels with Turkish 
names immediately became the English Hotel and 
the Hotel King George. The big hotel on the 
river, not far from the old British Residence, be- 
came the Hotel Maude, in honor of the captor of 
Bagdad. 

This was good business, as was mucli of the af- 
fected joy among the natives of Bagdad. But 
there was more in the hearts of the people than 
business. Even the Arabs were filled with grati- 
tude to the new lords of Bagdad for freeing them 
from the unspeakable Turks. 

I lunched, one day, with an Arab Sheikh, or 
head man. He was the governor of a considerable 
area north of Bagdad, in the fruitful region. He 
was a man of wealth, of education, of breeding. 



FEOM TURKISH TO BRITISH 247 

Richly dressed in silk, with perfect manners and 
that graceful air possible only to a polished East- 
erner, he carried himself with the utmost dignity^ 
yet seemed humble in his gratitude. He was in 
a position to appreciate fully what the British 
coming meant to the Arabs. He had been wronged 
steadily by the Turks; he had been threatened 
when he started to remonstrate for the wholesale 
brigandage; he had seen his friends tortured by 
the Turkish soldiers because they would not give 
enough for the Turkish army. In his beautiful 
French he said, ^ ^ In Bagdad the Turks were what 
the Germans were in Belgium. They took every- 
thing and we could do nothing. Now the British 
have come. What a difference! Now we are 
happy, everyone. England has our city, but 
takes us into her confidence. England will help. 
Turkey never helped. ' ' I was amazed to hear an 
Arab talk so. There was hope in his tone. There 
was assurance that Arabs have a good class. I had 
begun to think so when I first arrived in Bagdad. 
They seemed so different from the cut-throat type 
of the marsh district farther south. Many of us 
had been surprised at the proclamation of Gen- 



248 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

eral Maude to the people of Bagdad in which he 
called them ** Noble Arabs,'' and in which he put 
to them the proposal that they follow the lead of 
the Arabs in western Arabia, proclaim themselves 
independent, and ally themselves with the nations 
at war with Germany. We had all rather smiled 
at the words *^ Noble Arabs," but we began to 
understand. 

If the Arabs were grateful and happy at the 
British capture of Bagdad, other peoples were 
more so. The Arabs were linked to the Turks by 
religion. The Jews had been much more perse- 
cuted. So had the Christians. The people who 
appreciated the capture most of all were the Ar- 
menians. There was a girl in Bagdad who had 
been passed down from the north country to the 
American Consul for help. She had fled from the 
Turks in the massacres of the Armenians and 
banded together a group of girls to fight the Turk- 
ish soldiers. They had scraped together some 
guns and ammunition and had held a mountain 
pass against a vastly superior number of men. 
They fought all day, but the supply of ammuni- 
tion gave out and those that remained had to flee. 



FROM TURKISH TO BRITISH 249 

The girl arrived, after a long travel without rest, 
at Aleppo. There she was taken in by a Turkish 
official who had no patience with the ways of the 
Turkish soldiers. He took her in as his daughter 
and kept her till he could send her to a safer 
place. Finally he sent her to Bagdad. Never was 
there a happier girl in the world than she, living 
in Bagdad of the British. 

I attended the service in the Bagdad *^ Latin 
Church'' on Palm Sunday, just three weeks after 
the British entered the city. The church had been 
used by the Turks as a hospital during the cam- 
paign and when they left they attempted to de- 
stroy it by fire. The balcony was entirely burned 
away and much of the beautiful inside work was 
ruined. The Palm Sunday service was the first 
big service after the British took the city and 
there were a score or so of men in khaki in the 
rear of the church, which was filled with multi- 
tudes of native worshipers. The priest met us 
and nearly wept as he told something of the joy 
he felt at the release from the Turks. He had 
lived through the last days trying to keep up his 
school and to keep his people in good spirits 



250 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

against every disadvantage possible. Now he was 
free. The great congregation was composed 
largely of girls, in their pretty silk robes, or ah- 
has. The men, many in European clothes, sat 
apart from the women. There were Sisters of a 
French convent in the church also. They had been 
teachers before the war. When the war came, 
their position as enemy aliens was difficult. They 
were not allowed to leave the city and became 
nurses to the Turkish wounded. They did their 
best in the work and at the end their beautiful 
church was set fire to. They insisted that the 
men in khaki go also to the altar and receive each 
a palm branch, and as we came back through the 
aisle there were looks in the faces of many that 
bespoke heartfelt gratitude. 

During the Easter season our thoughts turned 
as at Christmas to the land of Palestine across 
the Arabian desert. There had been rumors for 
some time of an advance of the British up 
through Palestine. Now that Bagdad had fallen 
that seemed more probable than ever. We hoped 
that before long Jerusalem would also be a city 
under the British instead of under the Turks. 



FEOM TUEKISH TO BEITISH 251 

The world may rejoice that months before the 
next Easter after Bagdad's fall, Jerusalem, the 
** Mecca" of Christianity, the city from which 
we have received all that is best in our lives, fell 
to a Christian nation. No city is so inwrought 
into the tradition and emotions of the world as 
Jerusalem. People of all lands feel a deep sense 
of relief at the thought that the Turks have been 
driven out of it. There were more Jews and Chris- 
tians in Bagdad than in Jerusalem, so the capture 
of the city of the ^^ Arabian Nights'' affected more 
people in matters of life and death than did that 
of Jerusalem. But to us in the West the capture 
of Jerusalem is much more significant. Bagdad 
is near to our sense of the dramatic, to our im- 
aginations, but Jerusalem is near to our hearts. 

During that Easter week in Bagdad, we had 
news that America was on the verge of war with 
Germany. Every day we looked for the tele- 
graphic report that war had been declared. There 
were four Americans in Bagdad, Mr. Heyser, the 
American Consul; Mr. Stewart, Mr. Payne and 
myself. Secretaries of the Y. M. C. A. One even- 
ing we four were together on the roof of our 



252 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

building looking out over tlie river Tigris. It 
was a beautiful night. The bridge of boats on 
the river was just visible in the pale moonlight, 
the palms on the opposite bank looked like spec- 
ters, and the reflection of the lights from the 
buildings across the river made the ripples 
sparkle and play. We sat silently looking out 
over the river. From an officers' mess not far 
away came strains of a phonograph playing a 
lazy air. It seemed like a sort of fairyland, like 
a place that you might read about, but to which 
no real person ever went. Our reveries were 
broken now and then by bits of conversation. 
We wondered what America would do. America 
seemed so far away. We were in oriental Bag- 
dad. 

But the calm of fairyland was that which pre- 
ceded a storm. It soon came with its thundering 
reality. * ^AMERICA DECLARES WAR'' rang 
out the telegrams. The crash of the storm drove 
out every thought but that of war. It was fact — 
hard and cold. And it was right. We had wished 
it would come. Now we must do our part. The 
news seemed to say, ' * Get into it. Get away from 



FEOM TURKISH TO BRITISH 253 

fairyland. Get into the game, Americans! You 
have lives to give. Give them." The call was 
strong out there in Bagdad. We were in the war 
already. We knew what it meant. We had seen 
war from the fighters ' standpoint. And we wanted 
to get into it for our own land. To-day we are 
all in the Service. 

While we waited for some of our brothers, the 
English, to get out to Bagdad to take the places 
of the no-longer-neutral Americans, spring was 
changing into summer. Summer comes early in 
Mesopotamia. One afternoon a man fell in the 
street near our door, struck down with the heat. 
We carried him into the shade and poured water 
on him till he came to. After a good rest he was 
able to go to camp. That was in the middle of 
the afternoon. The temperature was above a hun- 
dred. About twelve hours later, sleeping on the 
roof, I was cold with two thick blankets. Mesopo- 
tamian summer was no joke. One of our number 
went to hospital with dysentery. Another was 
laid up with fever. There was nothing for it but 
to ** stick it," however. Everyone else was doing 
it. **Why don't you go to France?" said a 



254 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Tommy. ^* Bullets ain't half so bad as this blast 
from hell. ' ' 

It was hard fighting now and half the casual- 
ties were from heat. I went, during this weather, 
to the trenches about fifty miles north of Bagdad. 
Neither British nor Turks could do much fighting 
during that heat, though it was quite livable at 
night. We longed for the nights to cool things 
off. We were quite happy then. I shall never for- 
get a night that followed one of the worst of the 
days. Just behind the trenches we held a con- 
cert, right out on the plains. There were plenty 
of men who had had experience in stage life and 
many volunteered to **do a turn.'' Three thou- 
sand men turned out from near and far along the 
line to get the relief of a light show after the 
deadly heat of the day. Some of the men came 
over five miles. It was worth it. The comedians 
that got up on the shaky stage made of boxes 
were worth the price of admission if it had been 
a ten-mile walk. For scenery there was the bril- 
liant starry sky, for footlights a few ordinary lan- 
terns, and for a curtain — ^nothing. But the show 
was all the better for that. 



FKOM TURKISH TO BRITISH 255 

The cleverest man in the show was the sort that 
you have only to look at to laugh. He had his 
blouse turned inside out, had a Turkish fez stuck 
on the side of his head and a skirt of red silk tied 
around his waist. He had found a use at last for 
the keepsakes that he had had hidden in his treas- 
ured kit bag for months. He was ^^Grandmother 
from up country come to see London Town/' he 
said. He strutted up and down the boxes ' * seeing 
London, ' ' getting mixed up with busses and * * Bob- 
bies" and having something humorous to say 
about each and every characteristic of the city. 
Remembering that we were all, at the time, out 
of soap, with no prospect of getting any issued 
to us for months, he gave us the droll little song 
with a moral: 

Soap and water. 

Just a little bit of soap and water 

Any old kind of weather 

They both go well together. 

Take a tip from grandma, every 

Mother's son and daughter. 

If you want to get on in London Town 

Use soap (boom! boom!) and water. 

Next he did some mimicking. His best was at the 
expense of the Scotchmen. He said a Scotchman 



256 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

came to London and, in search of work, became 
part of a little theatrical company. His part was 
to be the echo for tragic words of the hero of the 
play. Our actor then became in turn the hero, the 
heroine and the echo. Suddenly he jumped high 
in the air, knocking one of the boxes to pieces as he 
landed on it. ** Heroine runs away with the vil- 
lain, * * he explained. Next he paced up and down 
over the boxes, tearing his hair and looking most 
dejected. **Hero angry with heroine.'' He took 
off his fez and held it in front of his face. ^ ^ Echo 
hiding behind the scenery. ' ' Again he became the 
distracted hero. ^ * Alas, alas ! " He held out his fez 
and from behind it came the echo, **Alas, alas!" 
He returned to the hero, and looking desperate 
shouted, ^^She flies away!!'' and the echo an- 
swered *^ Flees awaa," in broad Scotch drawl. 
The cheers from that mammoth crowd were so 
great that the Turks must have heard them. 

Many a night we had such a show, and on the 
cooler days which came once in a while we man- 
aged to get enough outdoor sports going to make 
life a pleasure. We were quite happy. The Turks 
were far from Bagdad. Even Samarra, the *'rail- 



I 



FEOM TURKISH TO BRITISH 257 

head'' of the Bagdad Railway as it moved up the 
Tigris from Bagdad, was in British hands. Most 
of the railway, a thousand miles of it, runs from 
Constantinople down toward Bagdad. Then there 
is a break of four hundred miles and the British 
had the rest of the line. The Russians had forced 
their way over the Persian hills from Kanikin and 
had joined hands with the British near the Per- 
sian border. We expected that with cooler weather 
the combined British-Russian army would march 
on, over the four hundred miles of break in the 
railway, and get into a country where fighting was 
good — perhaps make a drive toward Constanti- 
nople. *^0n to Bagdad" had been a wonderful 
success. Why not ^^On to Constantinople"? It 
might have been but for the trouble in Russia. 
With the heat of the plains and the trouble in- 
side her army the Russians retired from Mesopo- 
tamia and left the British right flank unprotected. 
There was nothing to do but *^dig in" and deter- 
mine to hold the position without the Russians. 
It was rather hard after such high hopes. But 
still after the great victory at Bagdad nobody 



258 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

could be down-liearted. Perhaps the British in 
Palestine would make the advance instead. 

We were happy in the trenches, anyway. There 
are lots of things worse than heat and Russian 
civil wars. And besides, America was in the war. 




When British and Rnssian forces came together in 
Bagdad 

(From a pJiotof/rapli hji Mr. Weir Stewart). 



M 


W*"'^' 


Ji|«S 




.'"■ 


p 




/'jSHHHh 


m i 












"^tM^WU 


Br^^^*' 






W^ 






■H 


i ^ 










M 


1 


L 




m 




3 


1 



Tommies interested in the telegraphic report, "America 






^ 



CHAPTER XIV 
BEHIND THE SCENES— THE Y. M. C. A. 

DuKiNG the show, ^*0n to Bagdad/' I was a 
stage hand. It was my one duty to be on hand to 
help the actors as they went through their parts. 
But in my position I was endeavoring to do one 
special work, that of the Young Men's Christian 
Association. 

On all the fronts from South Africa to Flanders 
and in all the great training centers the Y. M. 
C. A. has done its splendid work. During the 
thrilling campaign up the river Tigris to Bagdad 
there were some episodes in the work behind the 
scenes that were in keeping with the dramatic 
nature of the war. 

Everywhere that the Y. M. C. A. goes there is 
a **hut.'' A hut may be almost anything. My 
hut in Bagdad was a has-been Turkish hotel with 
spacious courts for entertainments, meetings and 
games. My hut at the trenches north of Bagdad, 

259 



260 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

in the desert region, was a row of tents with all 
outdoors behind the British lines for recreation. 
There was also a spacious dugout, dug with much 
sweat of brow, for use on special occasions, built 
more against the hurricanes and dust storms that 
bore away the tents, than against shells. At hos- 
pital my hut was the whole hospital, for the 
wounded could not walk around very much. Each 
was a hut. Each had the same requisites : a space, 
something to make music with, a place to write 
and read and talk. That makes a hut. 

What is done with the hut rests with the man 
in charge. Just what he will do depends mostly 
upon what he does best. He may be a lecturer, or 
a musician, or an athletic director, or an organ- 
izer, or a preacher. But whatever his forte, his 
responsibility for helping to lift the lives of those 
around him by his influence, is the prime factor. 
Being a musician, my work naturally centered 
in the evening concert. When there was no call 
for that I had to take a shot at something else ; at 
running off sports, or even at lecturing and speak- 
ing at meetings. 

What it meant to be such a stage hand in Meso- 



THE Y. M. C. A. 261 

potamia is clear from just one extract from my 
diary written at the trenches in the line defending 
Bagdad, in my dugout into which I ducked for a 
few hours* sleep in the cool of the night. 

Friday : 
Fritz was over in his airplane before breakfast. No 

scrap. Archie missed him. Lieut. C came into 

mess at breakfast and asked me to play for the men in 
the surgical tents. He said they were *'fed up.'' Cap- 
tain M , chaplain of the — Brigade, came in to ask 

to borrow the piano for a few hours. Lieut. P 

sent in the hockey sticks and Sergeant T , leader of 

the shire Regiment soccer team, brought in the foot- 
ball used in the League game. His team won. Several 
men sent in their names for ''turns'' in to-night's con^ 
cert. Note from S. & T. said no more firewood till next 
week. Transport delayed by dust storms. The orderly 
in the library went sick and sent word he could not tend 

to the books. Captain D sent in several bags of" 

fruit which he took from the Arabs who were selling it 
without licenses. Sold it cheap to the men. Steve fixed 
films for tomorrow's movies. Bobbed into hospital for 
a few minutes and gave them a tune. There were a 

good many fresh cases in. Saw Padre T and asked 

him to speak at the Sunday meeting. Got Anderson for 
lecture on his experiences in France. Took most of the 
afternoon to complete the program for the concert. Had 
a good football match after tea. Heat not so bad today. 
Cooled off at swimming parade before concert. Over a 
thousand at the show. Pet, the dancer, especially good. 



262 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

A Tommy I hadn 't seen before came in tonight after the 
show. Said his best chum just went west. He felt kind 
of low. Said he wanted some one to talk to. 

Some days were fuller, some less full. So far 
as there was any routine it was: morning, inter- 
ruptions and adjustments ; afternoon, errands and 
getting ready for the evening program ; evening, 
athletics and the program. 

Morning and afternoon tried to prove that run- 
ning a Y. M. C. A. was mostly doing business with 
this person or that. Evening and night tried to 
prove that it was the opposite, that the work was 
just a getting together of men with men. The 
night program I looked forward to. The morn- 
ing program I went through with. The thing that 
made the night program so enjoyable was that 
it was never necessary to go to any trouble to get 
a crowd. Going to the Y. M. C. A. was a habit. 
The Tommies came seven evenings a week. They 
rarely remembered when it was Sunday, but when 
they found hymn books on the benches or on boxes 
they stayed just the same. The Sunday evening 
^ ^ singsongs, ' ' where the Tommies called out their 
favorite hymns as long as they cared to sing and 



THE Y. M. C. A. 263 

then listened to a short practical address, were 
as enjoyable as anything else in the week. And 
they helped more. They brought us all together 
in the best possible atmosphere. 

When it came to the concerts and moving pic- 
ture shows Tommy was fine. No matter what 
might pass in his ordinary conversation he never 
acted anything but a gentleman in an evening 
show. Whether it was the influence of the place 
he was in or not, I do not know. But I do know 
that Tommy was always a gentleman. At one 
concert that I got up a Tommy started off on a 
parody that was far off-color. It was not neces- 
sary to stop him. His comrades did that. They 
hissed and looked daggers at him till he sat down 
for shame. They would be the same anywhere, 
except perhaps in the wet canteen, and the Y. M. 
C. A. took the place of that. 

There was a surprising amount of remarkable 
talent for concerts among the British troops. The 
average Tommy leaned toward sentimental songs, 
but when I hit upon a comic singer or an acrobat 
it was usually a find. 

I was going through a camp one morning, in 



264 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

search of talent. As I walked between the sleep- 
ing hnts of the men I was asked over and over 
again, '^ What's on at the Y. M. tonight, mateT' 
I inquired about talent of a comical nature and 
was directed to a certain tent. I stopped in front 
of it. There were eight or ten men inside. ^ ^ Con- 
cert at the Y. M. tonight, ' ' I said. ^ ^ Who can do 
a turnT' Immediately two looked up. One said, 
^^I'll sing ^The Sunshine of Your Smile.' " The 
other said, **I used to sing the ^Rosary.' " I said 
we had enough sentimental songs and what I 
wanted was something snappy. ** We have enough 
to go on with but if there is someone that has 
something good we'll put him in somewhere," I 
said. The man I wanted was a clever acrobat but 
not too anxious to give a hand. There was silence 
while the thought sunk in that he was not needed. 
Then the rest began to look at him and call out, 
*'Go on. Lefty!" **Do a turn at the Y. M.," or 
**Go on, Lefty. Do the flip-flap for the boys." 

Such were the diversities of possible talent and 
the ways and means of getting them together, the 
programs always turned out something like the 
following : 



THE Y. M. C. A. 265 

1. Comic song : * ' I like a Nice Mince Pie. ' ' 

Pt. Doyle, 13tli Hussars. 

2. Sentimental song: "Thora." 

Sergt. Blackwood, East Lanes. 

3. Sleight of hand tricks. 

Captain Dunlap, Royal Engineers. 

4. Baritone solo: "Glorious Devon. '^ 

Sergt. Gilder, Devonshires. 

5. Comic sketch: ''Hang the Telephone.'* 

Men of the Australian Wireless. 

6. Violin solo: ''Hungarian Dance.*' 

Mr. Clark, Y. M. C. A. 

7. Comic song: "The Major." 

Staff Sergeant Bailey, Flying Corps. 

8. Buck and wing dancing and acrobatics. 

Cpl. Roberts, South Wales Borderers. 

9. Scotch ballads. 

Pt. MacKay, Seaforth Highlanders. 

10. "Nonsense by the Yard.** 

Lieut. Page, R.A.M.C. 

11. Song: "Toreador.** 

Sergt. Adams, Hantshire Regt. 

12. Comic song: "I*m the Skin of a Spanish Onion.*' 

Pt. Wilson, Royal Field Artillery. 
God Save the King. 

Such concerts as those might be excelled on stages 
in London or New York, but no concerts could 
be more appreciated than those on the desolate 
plains of Mesopotamia. Everybody went, and 



266 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

everybody had a good time. At one of the con- 
certs at Amara, the big hospital center, there were 
fifty nurses and twice the number of officers at 
the show, as well as all the men that could get 
within earshot. 

With the great hospitals in Amara went the 
big concentration depots where the convalescent 
and recovered men were assembled to be sent back 
to join their units in the trenches. A good many 
had to spend a long time in Amara before going 
back to their units, and during the stay welcomed 
anything that could keep them interested. Many 
wanted things more serious than concerts. While 
I was there, there was a demand by so many men 
to learn a little of the Arabic language that we 
started an Arabic class and one of the secretaries 
took lessons from an educated Jew and kept 
enough ahead of the class in his studying to be 
able to teach the soldiers. In several of the camps 
there were Bible classes that met once a week un- 
der the leadership of secretaries. Among all ranks 
there were men who had in their days of civil life 
taken a real interest in things spiritual and also 
men who on active service had learned certain 



THE Y. M. C. A. 267 

lessons which made them seek power higher than 
that of man. I found among the privates in our 
station two men who had had theological training 
and with their help led a class which started with 
fifteen and grew steadily. Often wounded men in 
hospital, if they could leave their beds, came to the 
tent in which the class met. 

We had a great treat at one time when a man 
who has been doing wonderful work for many 
years as a missionary among the Arabs came to 
Amara to tell of his adventures and of the splen- 
did work of Missions in relieving the suifering 
among the unfortunate people in Arabia, As 
large a crowd turned out to hear him as had 
turned out to anything of lighter nature. Our 
leader, at the head of the Y. M. C. A. work in 
Mesopotamia, Mr. Dixon, a Canadian, was quick 
to find such speakers as he to send to the various 
centers along the rivers. Though the work at the 
front and in the concentration camps behind the 
lines was much more interesting and exciting and 
healthful, Mr. Dixon stayed year in and year out 
at the big base in Busra, managing the work of 
the Y. M. C. A. throughout the force. Once the 



268 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

climate of Busra and his steady labors so weak- 
ened him that he was forced to get away from the 
country, but he returned with all his good spirit 
to carry on the work, directing and encouraging 
the secretaries in base camps, in the hospital cen- 
ters and at the front. 

The work among the wounded in hospitals was 
as important as that among the men in fighting 
trim. *' Honest,'' said a fine-looking soldier who 
had spent two long months in hospital, *4f it 
weren't for the games and books and things that 
the Y. M. had, and the phonographs and concerts, 
I think I'd have gone crazy." There were many 
who felt the same way. In the Mesopotamia hos- 
pitals the very desolation of the country made it 
hard to enjoy all that the splendid doctors and 
nurses did for the men. It was especially so in 
the field hospitals. It was worse than being laid 
up in France. There was no smiling scenery to 
look out upon. There were no men and women 
in civilian clothes to come around and cheer up 
the wounded. There were no peasants, no sights, 
there was nothing but the monotonous life of war. 
The Arab workmen or the little Arab girls that 



THE Y. M. C. A. 269 

carried on their heads baskets of mud to make 
walls for new buildings only rubbed in the for- 
eignness of the country. It was not ^^blighty'' 
by any means. 

The thing that did the wounded the most good 
was the moving picture machine, with films of all 
sorts from current events to fairy stories, and 
with scenes laid in well-known places which 
brought the men home to scenery they had known 
long ago and longed to see again. The Tommies 
fairly jumped out of bed when they saw the 
machine entering the ward. *'Is it Charlie Chap- 
lin to-night!" they always asked. And then a 
more witty chap would say, '* Don't you know 
they've cut out the mustache? Charlie's out of 
a job. ' ' Army laws had ruled that no man might 
have a little scrubby mustache. He must have a 
real one or none at all. Many a man had to shave 
off regretfully the little tuft that he had nursed 
so lovingly on his upper lip. There was always a 
crowd around as some offending ** smart dresser" 
cautiously, heroically, sacrificed the handsome 
little ^* Charlie Chaplin" mustache. 

The concerts and meetings were the things of 



270 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

every day. But the work in Mesopotamia was 
full of surprises. There were opportunities for 
helping the actors in the most unusual places. 
I assisted an Indian Secretary one evening in 
running off an entertainment for Indian troops. 
None of them spoke English. None of them was 
Christian. But the Secretary's service was as 
real and the men appreciated it as much as any- 
one could. To advertise the entertainment signs 
were put up in seven different languages. After 
the concert a Subidar major, a Mohammedan, 
came to the Indian Secretary and gave him five 
rupees to help carry on the good work for his 
men. 

There was service for the Turks as well. The 
night after the capture of the Turks in the Dahra 
bend, just above Kut, it rained hard and there 
were no tents for the Turks. My friend and part- 
ner in the Y. M. C. A. work, Mr. Stewart, also 
now in aviation, opened up all the Y. M. C. A. 
tents within reach for the use of the Turkish offi- 
cers. They slept on the benches and tables and 
floor. But they were dry. No matter who they 



THE Y. M. C. A. 271 

were, tliey should not sleep in the rain if it could 
be helped. 

Then came the advance to Bagdad. Mr. Stew- 
art secured a large barge and packed it with 
boxes of biscuits, potted meat, canned fruit, 
canned milk and cigarettes. He secured from the 
transportation department permission to take it 
along and had it made fast to a steamer following 
on the heels of the troops. There was a halt and 
the barge caught up with the troops. While the 
men stopped to get a little rest before the next 
stage of the march they crowded to the river 
bank and stripped the barge of its contents. They 
had been on iron ration for several days and were 
likely to be so again for a long time. They were 
going to make the best of the opportunity to feed 
up. Each man was limited to one rupee worth, 
but it went, ton after ton, till the barge was 
empty. Tommy was hungry and wanted a smoke. 
He met a friend and was happy. 

Another unique experience was the turning 
over of the Turkish hotel in Bagdad for our use 
as the Y. M. C. A. The authorities informed us 
that the building was requisitioned for our use, 



272 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

that the owner would be paid by the government, 
but that we must get rid of him. That was harder 
than it sounded. The old neo-Turk could not 
understand the deal. He had been treated pretty- 
meanly by the Turks and could not see how he 
could expect anything different from the Eng- 
lish. The Turks had wanted hjs building, so they 
discovered that he was a spy and deported him. 
Then he returned to Bagdad and found his dear 
building almost ruined by the Turks. He had gone 
to a lot of trouble about it and had hopes of using 
it to fleece the British when they came in. Now 
it was gone. He proposed a plan by which he 
should give us so much a day if we would allow 
him to run the hotel. Everything failed and he 
went away for a while. He came back and the 
place was running as a big Y. M. He looked 
around and saw what was being charged for 
things and what the expenses of the improvements 
were. He also thought of how much he would 
have charged for the same things — about three 
times as much. Finally he thought of the offer he 
had made us. Then he gave it up. We were new 
to him. Never had he seen in all Turkey such a 



THE Y. M. C. A. 273 

way of doing business. He bought a plot of 
ground on the main street and started up a Per- 
j sian Garden where he had music always playing 
J and good things to eat at delightfully high prices. 
! The Y. M. C. A. of Bagdad was moving along 
at a great rate. The courts were used for con- 
certs, the hotel dining-room for the food counter 
of the canteen. The underground part, the ser- 
dab, was the library and reading-room. We had a 
great many books which were kindly sent in by 
the American Consul. The Kurds when they 
looted the city left quantities of books strewn 
about the streets and the Consul had them gath- 
ered up for our library. 

That part of the work was easily started. But 
the real task in Bagdad was to fit ourselves into 
the native life of Bagdad so as to get the 
greatest good out of the city. Mr. Stewart, 
after considerable hunt, located a baker who built 
a bake-oven in the building and baked quantities 
of delicious cakes. Next he found a man with 
enough left of his soda plant to set it up in our 
place and he too put out his wares for the use of 
Tommy Atkins in the Y. M. C. A. It seemed as 



274 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

though we were making pretty good use of Bag- 
dad's possessions. We could not have had any 
of these things farther down the river. Bagdad 
was so new to us we did not at first realize its 
possibilities. We found an Arab carpenter who 
came with an assistant and lived in the building, 
working all day long to get things in condition. 
We would not have trusted an Arab inside our 
tent before we got to Bagdad. For workers around 
the building we had little Bagdaddies who had 
been pressed into the Turks* service and had de- 
serted when the Turks left the city. For waiters 
in the elegant Officers' Tea Room we had little 
Armenian boys, all dressed in white suits. Surely 
that was not much like Mesopotamia. Then to 
cap the climax I set out to make something 
which had hitherto been unheard of for the 
Tommies in Mesopotamia — ice cream. I had very 
little idea how it was to be done but I was hope- 
ful. I finally found an Arab with enough cows 
so that he could supply me with milk for the ice 
cream if I could get the ice. Thanks to the Sup- 
plies Department of the British Army I got it. 
The Turks had left an ice machine in Bagdad 



THE Y. M. C. A. 275 

and the British had brought up another, so there 
was plenty of ice available. I found a tin worker 
in the bazaar who made some little freezers, cyl- 
inders of tin inside larger cylinders of wood, 
which an Arab could turn by hand. One thing 
more was necessary, something to eat the cream 
with. There were not enough spoons in Bagdad 
to supply what we would want. So I experi- 
mented with cones. Tommies had never heard of 
ice cream cones, but that was no proof they would 
not like them. With little tins in which the baker 
baked the cakes we experimented with dough to 
make patty cases. It was something of a prob- 
lem to make dough stiff enough so ice cream 
would not melt it, yet soft enough to eat. After 
considerable experimenting we finally arrived at 
the desired combination, and everything was 
ready. I ordered the Arab to bring his cows. 
He came at daybreak the next morning, with five 
or six cows and three wives; at least I suppose 
they were wives. They walked right up to the 
front door and waited. I leaned over the roof 
railing in my pajamas and told them to start 
work. The wives set at the milking and by the 



276 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

time I was down they had a pail quite full. The 
Arab, having received orders to return and repeat 
the performance at noon, led his charges away. 
Then a big Arab who was hired to turn the freez- 
ers took the milk, boiled it, let it cool, and set 
about making the ice cream with milk, sugar, a 
native vegetable matter that thickened it, and 
jam for flavoring. I put up signs '*ICE CREAM 
CONES AT THE Y. M. C. A.^^ Tommy did not 
know what ice cream cones were but he knew 
what ice cream was. The crowd that came in the 
first day was proof of the appreciation. Each 
day the crowd increased. American ice cream 
cones were a success with the British soldier in 
Bagdad, 

It was not long after this that I was with the 
Tommies at the front. It was over a hundred in 
the shade one afternoon when I heard a Tommy 
say to another, quietly, *^Say, mate! K you go 
sick you want to get sent to Bagdad. They've 
got ice cream and soda, and dirt cheap, in the 
Y. M." 

Twice, while in Mesopotamia, I had the thrill 
of having my work inspected by a general offi- 



THE Y. M. C. A. 277 

cer, one of them the Commander in Chief , General 
Maude. General Maude looked over the Bagdad 
Y. M. as he looked over his army, not letting a 
single thing escape his notice. He said little but 
seemed pleased. The other general, General 
Caley, with the idea of finding out what the men 
thought, stopped in front of a man who was drink- 
ing a mug of lemonade and asked him how his 
lemonade was. The Tommy brought up his hand 
to the side of his head quivering like a leaf. He 
spilt most of his drink in the excitement of being 
spoken to by the general as he blurted out, ^ ^ Oh 1 
Beautiful, sir, beautiful.'' 

He was pretty nearly right. It was beautiful to 
have a cool drink that kind of weather. The heat 
grew steadily worse. In July the orderly in 
charge of the canteen in one of the camps went 
crazy with heat stroke and died; a helper got 
fever and had a temperature of a hundred and 
eight, yet pulled through. In a machine-gun com- 
pany next door eighty-seven men went under 
from the heat in one week. One of our Y. M. C. A. 
secretaries died and several others had narrow es- 
capes. 



278 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BEITISH 

I do not know whether as a flyer in the service 
of Uncle Sam I shall be in such need as were the 
men in Mesopotamia, but if so I pray that there 
may be a Y. M. C. A. handy. When I go again 
to the front, this time as actor, not as stage hand, 
I hope that I may receive from the stage hands 
what I tried to give when I was one. 




Bazaar Chiefs, the commercial geniuses of ]\Iesopotamia 




The author, as guest of the Royal Flying Corps, begin- 
ning early to learn to fly for Uncle Sam 



CHAPTER XV 

PERSONS OF THE PLAY 

When I first went among the British, America 
was neutral and there were small prospects of 
her soon becoming combatant. As an American 
among Englishmen, Scotchmen, Irishmen, Welsh- 
men and Australians my position was peculiar. 
The feeling against America among the forces 
at the front was tremendous. The Tommies had 
a little poem that they repeated at every possible 
occasion. It had a verse for every letter in the 
alphabet. When they came to the letter *<Y'^ 
they said: 

Y is for Yankee. He*s living in clover. 

He'll come in this war when it's jolly well over. 

Even in April, when America did come into 
the war, they said *^0h, well. Now that weVe 
been fighting for three years and saving Amer- 
ican lives America comes in and takes the credit. '^ 

279 



280 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

But that did not last long. It was soon evi- 
dent that if America had not come in when Rus- 
sia went out there would have been a most la- 
mentable state of affairs, and during my last days 
with the British I heard nothing but good spoken 
of America. Cockneys were the most bitter 
against America while we were neutral. They 
became the most joyful when we came into the 
war. When the King sent to our President a 
congratulatory message on the declaration of war, 
that was the end of all bitterness. If the King 
said it was good it was good. 

During the fall of 1916, when the feeling against 
America was strongest, the bitterness of the pri- 
vates and non-commissioned officers was inde- 
scribable. The feeling that they were giving their 
lives and Americans were holding on to theirs 
was at the bottom of it. They talked so about it 
that the sentiment grew to absolute hatred of 
America and all Americans. Some men in our 
tents were talking about America one evening 
and as they talked their language became more 
and more violent. When they had gone on for a 
while I said, *^I'll have to take all that cursing to 



PEESONS OF THE PLAY 281 

myself, for I am an American.'' They imme- 
diately stopped and one of them said, *^0h, beg 
pardon, sir. I didn't know you were an Amer- 
ican." It might seem curious that they knew so 
much about Americans and yet did not know one 
when they saw him — ^but they were just talking, 
just patting themselves on the back for not being 
slackers. 

The attitude among thinking Englishmen is, I 
think, pretty well expressed in something a friend. 

Captain D of the E. A. M. C, said to me. 

^'You know, the bitter hatred toward you Amer- 
icans is a curious thing. We officers feel it much 
less strongly than the privates. My personal 
opinion is that America is staying out for purely 
financial reasons. I am dead against the inter- 
ests that are holding America out but I think that 
as a nation America is for us. I am fearful that 
the Germans in America are keeping her out. 
That seems to be the feeling generally. The 
privates all say America * daren't' come in. They 
vent their hatred against all Americans since they 
know practically none. But I am sure there is 
some of the good old Anglo-Saxon blood in Amer- 



282 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

leans, even today. I have known few Americans, 
but I have always had a liking for them. To us 
Englishmen there is always a sort of romance 
about knowing Americans or going to America. 
It is so new. We feel as though we were going 
into a new kind of world, yet one which down 
underneath is just like ours. You are such a lively 
lot — ^lots of go and all that. We think of all 
Americans as a sort of mixture of cowboy and 
trust magnate. We can^t help liking you even 
if we are bitter toward America for not coming 
into the war. And say — ^why are you out here 
yourself? Have you a family in England? No? 
Then if they let some of you come and help, why 
doesn't the whole country come over?'* 

That last question was on the lips of everyone, 
of every rank. **Why are you helping us and not 
all?'' It did no harm to have them look at it in 
that way. It did the British good to see Amer- 
icans eager to be of use to the Allies. They liked 
it, and I do not wonder. The British have taken 
a lot of the brunt of the war ever since it started 
and it helped to feel that the fact was appreciated 
by us, their brothers across the water. They 



PERSONS OF THE PLAY 283 

realized that the time must come when their 
brothers, the Americans, would have to take the 
stand either for or against England. They knew 
that the only hope for the world was for England 
and America to be drawn closer and closer to- 
gether in bonds of brotherhood, and they gave 
to us few Americans with them in Mesopotamia 
the best of the fine treatment which English cul- 
ture has taught every well-bred Englishman. For 
all they said about America they had a deep love 
for it way down in their hearts and they knew 
that we had the same for England. 

Soon after New Year's Day of 1917 a rumor 
went around Mesopotamia that America was going 
to declare war on England. I could see among the 
officers I knew best a very depressed feeling. 
They had all put in their words of hatred of 
America, but when it came to thoughts of a real 
break, that was very different. They did not 
say much but they thought. They thought of all 
the natural bonds between England and America, 
of the English blood that went to make up the 
great republic, and felt as though they were go- 
ing to have to make war on their brothers. 



284 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

At lunch, one day, the Colonel, our command- 
ant, said, **Well, Clark, we'll have to put you in 
jail, that's all." "We tried to laugh but it was 
impossible. There was a thought in the minds of 
all at the table, the thought of the frightfulness 
of brother fighting against brother. Thank God 
it will not be ! Thank God that Englishmen and 
Americans may be ^^ brothers in arms'' and 
*^ brothers in hearts"! 

One never appreciates a man till he is in his 
shoes. When one has to buck the same prob- 
lems as another he finds wherein the other was 
strong or weak. Americans have to be with Eng- 
lishmen long enough to feel the influences under 
which they live, in order to appreciate them. 
There is no better way of getting to know the 
English than to live with them on active service. 
They are themselves, pure and simple, there. If 
one year with the English on active service was 
not enough to form a definite appreciation of 
them, it at least gave examples. 

The man I admired most among the English 
was a captain in the R. A. M. C. He was a regu- 
lar army officer, strict, but kindly, and as strict 



PERSONS OF THE PLAY 285 

with himself. He was tall and straight and per- 
fectly dressed. He was graceful and most courte- 
ous, no matter how aggravated he might be in- 
side. When things went wrong he was always the 
first to say, **What of it? Carry on.'' I never 
heard him speak sharply, but he was always in- 
sistent. He took a pride in his men, they took 
a pride in him. His word was absolutely iron- 
clad. His punctuality was the same. I used to 
set my watch by his arrivals at parades. Yet with 
all that, in America we would call him a snob. 
He was distinctly of the *^ upper class'' and real- 
ized it. To him the commission meant he was 
of the ^ ^ army officer class. ' ' But there were among 
us, officers who joined after the war began who 
were distinctly not of that class, and there were 
some who had worked their way up through the 
ranks. He was not chummy with these, but he 
was always pleasant. They never felt out of place. 
If they were British officers he extended them 
the right hand of fellowship. No matter where 
they might stand in relation to court society, they 
were British officers and were taken in without a 
grudge. But there was still underneath some- 



286 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

thing of the royal society feeling. I went to him 
one day to ask him to detail a certain amount of 
transport to me for my nse in the work for the 
men. It was a rather large request to make, but 
he was very pleasant and said he would see to 
it. When the time came something went wrong 
and I did not get the transport. There had been 
a hitch in getting the order through the Sergeant 
Major — the usual excuse. A little later I wanted 
the same thing. I chanced to be having tea with 
the captain. I mentioned the thing to him there. 
There was no more seeing that it would be done. 
He wrote out the order while I was with him and 
I got what I wanted. I had met him on the social 
grounds of the British officers' mess. 

A man much like the one I have just described, 
yet in many ways very different, was an English 
Lieutenant in the Indian army. He had served 
many years in India and had acquired a good deal 
of the Oriental's outlook on life. I traveled with 
him for some time on an ocean steamer, in East- 
em waters. The rest of the passengers on the 
steamer were from England or from America. 
None of us really understood the Lieutenant. He 



PEESONS OF THE PLAY 287 

loved to sit and look out over the water for hours. 
He was not in love. He was too old for that. It 
was his Oriental training. He never broke into a 
conversation to get in one of his thoughts. When 
he was on deck or in the smoking room with one or 
two others he would say something, and always 
something worth while. He was never impatient, 
never critical ; always calm, always self-possessed. 
If we made very slow time it did not trouble him 
in the least. He had acquired that attitude of 
the Oriental which gives time very little value. 
He was anxious that we do the best we could un- 
der the circumstances, but nothing more. It was 
what one did, rather than the results that mat- 
tered to him. His conviction was that of the East- 
erner — **You have your ideas and experiences. 
I have mine. I shall not try to impress mine on 
you and I expect the same treatment in return." 
The Lieutenant, because of the number of officers 
over him who had been killed, was the logical 
candidate for the commission of major in his com- 
mand, but on account of the rules of the Indian 
army he could not be promoted until he had served 
the required number of years, though men with 



288 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

less experience in active service than he were put 
over him. No one would have found that out from 
him. Little difference did it make to him whether 
anyone else knew anything about his burdens. 
He knew them and had to bear them. Others 
could bear theirs. His silence was too much for 
one of the fresh Americans on board. ^^ Queer 
duck^' was his estimate. But, curiously enough, 
before the end of the voyage, the Indian officer 
had won his way to the heart of every passenger 
aboard. 

The man who was above everything else a 
fighter was the Scotchman. He wanted to have a 
thing finished right away. The English officer 
from India was perfectly willing to wait patiently 
for results, so long as things were being done 
right. But not so the Scotchman. The code of 
the Scotchmen I knew in Mesopotamia seemed to 
be: ^^Love your friend and hate your enemy — 
and get him soon. ' ' With the Indian officer there 
was little of the spirit of revenge. It was * * Carry 
on" with him. What if somebody did do some- 
thing awfully mean ! He will suffer for it in due 
time. But with the Scotchman it was different. 



PERSONS OF THE PLAY 289 

I knew a man of the famous Black Watch regi- 
ment and saw a great deal of him. He impressed 
me more than anyone else I met among the 
British. His name was Jock, and he came from 
the little island of Rum in the north of Scot- 
land. The burden of his song was ^ ^Fair play and 
fight.'' At the battle of Mons he saw a German 
medical officer stop to ^x the wound of a Scotch- 
man. Another Scotchman saw the German, too. 
His blood was up too high and he plunged his 
bayonet through the German. Jock saw the act 
and quick as a flash rushed at his brother Scot 
and gave him a taste of his bayonet. The act had 
been foul play and Jock would not see that ; Jock 
had the word ** fight" written all over his face. 
Nothing would get past him without his giving a 
good fight. In a friendly soccer game Jock saw 
a man do some dirty playing and before the game 
was over he had given the man such a thrashing 
with his stick that he had to be carried off the field. 
Jock was champion boxer of his company and 
cared not who might want to pick a scrap with 
him. He was more like a bulldog than anything 
else. He was always good and ready for a scrap. 



290 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

Through his fighting he had twice been reduced 
from sergeant to private, but he did not care. He 
had fought what his sense of fairness taught him 
to fight. That was all that mattered. A Ser- 
geant came in one day and borrowed something 
from Jock. Jock gave it to him with the char- 
acteristic Scotch warning, ^^See that ye get yon 
back again. ^' The Sergeant, his dignity much 
ruffled, said, **Who do you think you're talking 
tor' '' Hoo aboot theeself ? ' ' said Jock. ^ ^f I 'd 
been a mon such as ye I'd been more than a ser- 
geant to-day. ' ' That was enough for the Sergeant. 
He knew the man he was talking to. 

But along with the bulldog part of Jock's make- 
up went the most sympathetic and loving nature 
I ever knew. With those near his heart he had 
something of the nature of the mother lion. He 
would spring at anyone who attempted to dis- 
parage or to injure any of his friends, and would 
stand up for them to the last minute. He had 
not the least pride about his own goodness, but 
when it came to that of a friend it was different. 
There was a man in camp with us who had been 
a lay preacher before the war. He had not had 



PEESONS OF THE PLAY 291 

many educational advantages but had studied for 
the lay preaching at night after work. Jock took 
strongly to him, for the man was sincere. The 
man's name was mentioned in a general conver- 
sation one day and someone said he thought the 
lay preacher would slack when it came to the 
pinch. Jock was up like a shot. ^'Who said 
that?" he said. **I did,'' returned the speaker. 
'* You've got me to answer for that," said Jock. 
**It's a lie, and you take it back or step up to 
me." The thoughtless offender was somewhat 
put out. His evidence was not good enough to 
give him courage to face the fiery Scotchman. 
**Well," he said, **I don't know him very well, 
but that's what somebody said." Jock let loose 
a few more words of wisdom to the offender and 
let him alone to recuperate from the blow to his 
self-esteem. *'I'm far fro' bein' a Y. M. C. A. 
bloke," said Jock, *^but I ha' a good eye for them 
as are." **Y. M. C. A. bloke" was the Scotch- 
man's way of describing a man who took his re- 
ligion seriously. There were all sorts in the army 
as in the rest of the world, most of us short of 
the mark, others over it. The religion of Jock, 



292 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

so near as I could make it out, was a religion 
of fight. He had been brought up to fight 
and had fought all his life. His duty in life was 
to fight, and the devil take the man that tries foul 
play while Jock's around. There may be in this 
a reason for the way the Black Watch fought on 
the advance to and past Bagdad. 

Among all the types in the British army, the 
man who appealed to me as most like Americans 
was an Australian, a Lieutenant Pilot in the Royal 
Flying Corps. Making a friend of him seemed 
like making a friend of a man at home. He used 
to come into my tent when we each had a minute 
and talk things over. He loved to talk about 
America. The free and open-air life that he had 
led on the cattle ranches of Australia had made 
him lean more to the American lively spirit than 
to the more sedate demeanor of the English. He 
loved to tell of his exploits as a cow puncher in 
Australia and say he hoped some day to spend 
some time on the ranches of Western America. 
He was a university man and had done a lot of 
thinking out in Mesopotamia. He, too, was with 
the English for the first time. In Australia he 



PEESONS OF THE PLAY 293 

had been far away from the home comitry and 
had always looked to America as the logical place 
to go if he ever left Australia. He was loyal to 
England right down to the bone, but he felt that 
with the great freedom for self-government that 
England gave Australia, the Australians were up 
against the same sort of problems of government 
that America was. He felt that in England there 
was very much precedent, very much that was in- 
grained in the people and the government, while 
Australia and America were only beginning to 
make precedents, only beginning to put customs 
into the grain of the people. Only he felt that 
America had done so much more than Australia. 
He looked at America as a sort of big brother. 
He would surely get there some day. Just for 
the present his was to do his bit, probably his all 
for the mother country to whose call Australia 
was responding so splendidly. 

I wish I could go on to tell of more and more 
friends, more and more different kinds of men 
with whom I came into intimate contact in Meso- 
potamia: Welshmen with their beautiful voices 
and pleasant ways of pronouncing the English Ian- 



294 TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

guage ; the men from the different parts of Eng- 
land, Yorkshire, Devonshire, Dorsetshire, Hant- 
shire, Lancashire, Leicestershire; and all the 
other sections represented, each with their little 
characteristics, each with their attractions. But 
there must be an end. 

It was a day fuU of mixed feelings when I 
boarded a transport at Busra, bound for Bom- 
bay, from where I was to sail for America. I 
hated to leave the land where I had been so de- 
lightfully busy for a year, and hated to leave all 
the good friends that I had made among the Brit- 
ish. But I was anxious to get home and see 
whether Uncle Sam could find a use for me in his 
new army. 

We lay at the bank on the big B. I. steamer, 
Edavana, till the sun sank to rest. The white 
clouds that hovered just above the horizon turned 
with the rays of the setting sun, first a tender 
pink, then a rich scarlet and finally gold with 
glistening, silvering edges. The blue sky above 
became paler and paler. Finally the brilliancy 
of the clouds died away and a beautiful sky with 
a thin crescent moon in its center was left over 



PEESONS OF THE PLAY 295 

the tops of the palms. Farewell to the beauties 
of Mesopotamia. 

Next morning we were far from Busra, steam- 
ing full speed to Bombay. On deck I met an of- 
ficer I had known in Bagdad. ^' Hello/' he said. 
' ' Going on leave r ' ' ' No/ ' I said. ' ' Farther than 
that. Going home to America to get into the 
fight.'' 



(1) 



Important War Books 

lUllllilillllllillllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllilllllllllllllllllli^ 

UNDER FOUR FLAGS FOR FRANCE ^ 

By Captain George Clarke Musgrave 1 1 

What Captain Musgrave saw as an observer on the Western 
front since 1914 is precisely what every American wants to 
know. He tells the story of the war to date, in simple, nar- 
rative form, intensely interesting and remarkably informa- 
tive. If you want a true picture of all that has happened, 
and of the situation as it exists today, you will find it in 
this book. 

Illustrated, $2.00 net 



TO BAGDAD WITH THE BRITISH 

By Arthur T. Clark 

Here is the first accurate account of the thrilling campaign 
in Mesopotamia. The author was a member of the British 
Expeditionary Forces and saw the wild rout of the Turks 
from Kut-el-Amara to Bagdad. His book brings home the 
absorbing story of this important part of the war, and 
shows the real soldier Tommy Atkins is. 

Illustrated, $1.50 net 



OUT THERE 

By Charles W. Whitehaib 

This is a story by a Y. M. C. A. worker, who has seen ser- 
vice at the front with the English and French soldiers, in 
Egypt, Flanders, England and Scotland and who has wit- 
nessed some of the greatest battles of the present war. 

Illustrated, $1.50 net 

iiiniinwsQiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii^^ 

TH£S£ ABE APPLETON BOOKS 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY .... NEW YORK 

519 



True Stories of the War 

iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 

MEN, WOMEN AND WAR 

By Will Irwin, author of "The Latin at War." 

With the inquisitiveness of the reporter and the pen of an 
artist in words the author has in this book given us the 
human side of an inhuman war. He saw and understood 
the implacable German war machine; the Belgian fighting 
for his homeland; the regenerated French defending their 
country against the invader, and the imperturbable English, 
determined to maintain their honor even if the empire was 
threatened. 

"The splendid story of Ypres is the fullest outline of that 
battle that the present reviewer has seen. Mr. Irwin's book 
is all the better for not having been long. It has no dull 
pages." — The New York Times. 

$1.10 net 



THE LATIN AT WAR 

By Will Irwin, author of "Men, Women and War.*' 

No correspondent "at the front" has found more stories of 
human interest than has Mr. Irwin. In this book he has set 
forth his experiences and observations in France and Italy 
during the year 1917, and discusses the social and economic 
conditions as seen through the eyes of civilians and soldiers 
he interviewed. 

"He makes you visualize while you read, because he Tisual- 
ized while he wrote." — The Outlook, New York. 

"It is a fascinating volume throughout; the more so because 
of the writer's unfailing sense of humor, of pathos, and of 
sympathy with human nature in all its phases and experi- 
ences." — The New York Tribune. 

$1.75 net 



■lllllllllltllilllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllillllllllli 

THESE ABE APPLETON BOOKS 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY - - - - NEW YORK 

S16 



Important War Books 

liitiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii!!^^ 

AMERICAN WOMEN AND THE WORLD WAR 

By Ida Clyde Claeke 

This is a splendid story, brimming with interest, telling how 
the women of America mobilized and organized almost over 
night, what they have accomplished and the work of the 
various women's organizations. Every woman can derive 
from it inspiration and information of particular value to 
these times. ^g.OO net 

GREAT BRITAIN'S PART 

By Paul D. Ceavath 

In brief compass the author tells what Great Britain has 
done and is doing to help win the great war. The book is 
unique among war books because it is a story of organiza- 
tion rather than of battle front scenes and is a side of the 
war few other writers have more than touched upon. 
"It would be difficult to make language clearer or more 
effective. . . . It is a veritable pistol shot of alluring 
information." — The Christian Intelligencer, New York. 
$1.00 net 

OUT OF THEIR OWN MOUTHS 

With an introduction by William Roscoe Thayer 

To prove conclusively the identity of the aggressors in the 
great war, and their ultimate aims this book has been pre- 
pared from the official documents, speeches, letters and 
hundreds of unofficial statements of German leaders. With 
few exceptions, the extracts included in this collection are 
taken directly from the German. 

"It is the most comprehensive collection of this character 
that has yet appeared." — The Springfield Union. 

$1.00 net 

iitiiiiiraiiiniiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii 

THESE ABE AFPI.ETON BOOKS 

D. APPLETON AND COMPANY . - - - NEW YORK 

520 



^ M 



79 




0^ . 











oV 



\' 



0^ .J^^^- -^oV** 



A 




^ ,.^'% ''^S /\ '^^^' ^^^^'-^ ^.-^-'^ 



*^^^^^^ * -^ ^ "'''^^^^^<' xP '^ Deacidified using the Bookkeeper process. 

» * J^^^CCv^ ^ K o '^A^^^ '' PS Neutralizing agent: Magnesium Oxide 

V *" • ' ^ * '^^^ . . ^^ "* °^'' ^0 Treatment Date: ^AV 2Q01 

o ^^ ^"^ .'i^i^te'^ "^ ^"^"^ ^'4.*^ PreservationTechnologies 



-^^^^ 




A WORLD LEADER IN PAPER PRESERVATION 

111 Thomson Park Drive 
Cranberry Township, PA 1 6066 
(724)779-2111 




•^■.. \ / .-kS*;-. '*....*^ .-'M--. '*^../ .• 




^^ OSS -'3 1 ^ X.^' 

N. MANCHESTER, 
INDIANA 46962 J Jo 



